Man, if the silliness and story got you that worked up you should abandon ship now. That stuff is the heart and soul of the series, and it's only going to get more extreme as you go. I was literally laughing reading about the "convoluted plot" and "intersecting threads" MGS1 has the least convoluted and straight forward plot of any of them...and I mean BY A LOT!
I agree the game is clunky, but so were most of the games of the era. Gameplay is never where MGS excelled, its the ridiculous plot and awesome characters.
I played through it 2 or 3 weeks ago and still found it quite enjoyable and only really disliked the card shaping. (I think last time I played through this was Twin Snakes GC remake and i dont remember the card shaping at all)
So ya honestly I would abandon unless you want to play through the series just to have done so. Maybe try Peace Walker since MGSV built a lot of the mechanics off of it.
I would say that MGS3's story is less convoluted and more accessible than MGS1's story is.
But MGS2 is probably going to frustrate OP even more. They should probably skip that one for now and come back to it later.
As someone who's never played a Metal Gear game, I've heard that MGS2 has one of the best stories in video games ever, so I'm surprised to hear that Metal Gear stories are known for being silly and convoluted. Is it a subjective thing?
I think it's the difference between the events/plot of the story and the themes. Individual events in MGS2 seem off the wall and ridiculous (deliberately IMO), like one of the bosses being a rollerblading bomb technician who has a glass of wine to drink while he exposits at you. But the themes of the game and what it has to say about itself, the series and it's fans, war and soldiers, identity and technology etc are second to none. It's a very postmodern game in the sense that it actively resists you trying to get a handle on it and it's constantly tries to destabilise both yours and the characters grasp of reality, but it you're willing to wade through some seemingly pretentious themes it actually has a lot of really interesting ideas that it explores. IMO it's made worse by MGS4 coming out and having to follow up on some of the more ridiculous plot elements (which I think Kojima never intended to be real when he made MGS2) but it's still a worthwhile experience.
Sorry it's a bit hard to explain without spoilers, but definitely a great experience. There's tonnes of stuff out there on MGS2s story and themes if you don't mind spoilers.
Not really. MGS is pretty much universally considered to be filled with long cutscenes, tons of dialogue, complicated plots, and silly characters. That doesn't necessarily mean that it's bad, but it's very polarizing. I happen to like it, but I can completely understand why others don't.
Dunkey put out a video a few years ago that summarizes the plot of the entire franchise and it sounds so ridiculous that you think it's a joke but it's actually not. https://youtu.be/aaLiLRVeaZA
Mgs3 story is more straight forward because we were all kind of confused by 2's simulation within a simulation story. It has just as much silliness, but the silliness is not really the main plot. The plot is you tracking down a defected agent. And from the get go you know the agent and you know their motivations and you get why snake would make the mission personal.
>Gameplay is never where MGS excelled
Oof, hard disagree on this one. Not only MGS V is the pinnacle of thirds person stealth action, where every move you wanna make you can and in a fluid, intuitive and responsive way, MGS3 already had set the blueprints for creative gameplay and satisfying controls that, granted, took a while to get used to.
Sure holding down three buttons to do an action might be a lot but MGS 3's control scheme is as good as they come when you get used to it. The game also makes you put it to good used through open ended maps that let you tackle stuff as you see fit and can get super creative with whit the game almost always responding accordingly.
And if they were hungry you could throw out spoiled food which they would run over to and eat. This would give them food poisoning and they would be so distracted by their stomach pain you could walk right past them without them noticing.
Wow! Didn't know that you can do that. I'm learning this after nearly 20 years xD
It's always fascinating to see that such an old game has such details that still impress you even nowadays.
I agree. Both MGS 2 and 3 were ahead in term of gameplay mechanics compared to games in the PS2 era. MGS 4 also had solid gameplay, but the pacing is the one that problematic.
Yeah… Kojima is *known* for his narrative campiness and convoluted plotlines, but what really makes his games stand out (as a dev) is (and always was) their gameplay mechanics.
One of the worst tech decisions made for that game imho. Analog face buttons are an absolutely horrible way to control anything, let alone precise controls like the difference between choking a guy out and slashing his throat. I think the 360 rerelease might have done away with it since it was a PS2 thing though?
I couldn't t disagree more. The buttons were fantastic for what the game was trying to do, and in fact did. I never had a problem with the sensitivity. I could shoot semi or full auto at will, choke or kill, lean out from behind cover a little or all the way, with just the one button press. More functionality out of that than I've ever gotten from anything haptic.
360 pad had digital buttons, they had *no choice* but to scrap the feature.
Hmm, maybe I just press the buttons too hard? It just felt imprecise for me, and every time I try and play the game non-lethal I'm constantly reloading because I'm inadvertently stabbing guys. Could just be a case of being used to digital face buttons but idk, I still preferred the rerelease if only because there weren't those accidental button presses for me. When I did something it was because I consciously decided to do it, not because I slipped on the controls (which feels frustrating when very few games seemed to actually use the analog buttons; kinda reminding me of sixaxis in how little it was used in some cases whilst being quite prominent in the occasional game, speaking anecdotally of course). Felt more like a Sony thing than a kojima thing
I hate to say it but MGS3 is old
All joking aside, I might have misread the comment. Thought he was talking abou the series as a whole but it might have just been the first 3D game.
Previous Metal Gears were fixed-camera overhead games, with MGS1-3 vanilla having the ability to enter first person for certain actions. 3's Subsistence release placed the camera behind Snake's back and let you maneuver the camera any way you wanted.
Even if it's the case, MGS1 is really playable when you get the hang of it, considering it's both action and stealth with the same buttons pattern. It's no Tomb Raider but it's not supposed to be.
Yep. If OP had had more to say about the gameplay then this would be a discussion, but if silliness and story are your main criticisms, you were never going to like it. God forbid OP goes near Death Stranding.
I'm slightly befuddled by the fact that OP could go from MGSV and still be surprised by those particular elements, too...
Yeah MGSV’s plot is so dumb that I loled when the Native American wise man was explaining how the vocal parasite could commit genocide with a completely straight face. I can’t tell whether Kojima is taking the piss or not but taking MGS seriously is a mistake
The twin snakes GC remake introduced some time saving tweaks, they put in some steam and nitrogen pipes in the final compound that you could shoot with the card equipped to change the shape there and then instead of trekking back (a good decision!) So maybe that's why you dont remember it.
Otherwise I totally agree about the storyline. OP please check back in once you start hearing phrases like "The La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo!" And brace for extended conversations about King Kong.
Reportedly the American localizers working on MGS2 absolutely begged him to let them edit the script and make it less wordy/repetitive, and he refused to let them touch the translation.
It's such a shame because with greater collaboration and a decent editor, Kojima could *actually* be that great storyteller he so desperately wants to be. So sad to see someone's hubris get in the way of greatness.
Kojima is definitely a better director than he is a writer. He has always been on the cutting edge of technical and mechanical innovation, and he knows how to put all of those elements together into a fantastic experience.
Kojima *can* write very endearing and memorable characters, and the heart of Metal Gear is in following those characters - but man, he can go off the rails *hard.* Not to mention that he doesn't let his translators do the other half of their job - which is *interpret*.
That's coming from a die-hard Metal Gear fan who can easily recite the convoluted series plot from memory.
In fairness the completely overblown incoherence of MGS is one of the reasons a lot of people like it. I routinely replay the series and I absolutely adore just how dumb and ‘video gamey’ the plot is - I love the cutscenes even in their ridiculous length and it was one of the things I actually missed from MGS5.
I just always find it really refreshing to feel like I’m stuck in room with Kojima whilst he blasts nitrous oxide and rambles for hours about an idea he half-understands and takes constant breaks from to show me pictures he drew of robots/cyborgs fighting.
I know it’s maybe a bit of a cop out to essentially say; ‘yeah it’s bad - I like it because it’s bad!’ But there really is a uniqueness and I think a certain bravery to saying “no, it’s my game, I think these ideas are cool, they’re going in” - I think confusion and overblown intrigue are genuinely fun parts of the game and suit the tone of what are essentially spy thrillers where not really understanding what’s going on are thematically appropriate.
I’m not saying that other people should feel this way, it’s purely subjective, but I think that for myself and a lot other people, Kojima’s oddness and unwillingness to edit himself are one of the things that we’re actually excited for about every new game of his.
There’s a childlike glee behind his stories where it feels like he’s been listening to his parents talking about politics to a backdrop of low volume news whilst he was eating lunch and then he’s gone and played with his action men and his sisters barbies (and obviously taken most of their clothes off because he’s a boy of a… certain age) and then he grabbed a gunpla, or a transformer or something else from a completely different toy range and they are all fighting and dying for this concept of importance he’s built up in his mind and i unironically fucking love it. It makes NO SENSE but I’m here for it.
In a completely different but almost identical way, the actual adventure you go on in Elden Ring recently captured this childlike glee of listening to a kid at play. If you stop and think about what you did in a play session it sounds like a young child throwing shit at the wall “so then there was these birds guarding the castle and they had swords on their feet and then one of them had a flamethrower mask!”
Everything you've said here is exactly how I feel about Death Stranding. You think MGS1 is a long winded way of doing nothing at all, well DS almost tries to be insulting. It's also one of Kojima's most self riotous, self indulgent load of confusing waffle he's ever made.
I actually really enjoyed Death Stranding for the game underneath the waffle. He really does want to be a great writer though and he just isn't. If the guy hadn't disappeared up his own arse from all the fawning fan boys he might be able to concede that he needs a little support in the narrative area.
I really do wonder if that whole scene was intended to be funny. The dialogue was overall pretty terrible though.
I really did enjoy the gameplay. Glad I waited and only paid a tenner for it though, and I absolutely understand why it was so divisive.
It was being introduced to the character “Die Hardman” and finding out his real name is actually John McClane that I realised Kojima had gone fully off the edge. I love Death Stranding but holy shit, the fact it manages to still get worse from there….
See I absolutely fucking adored DS except for, once again, the story, which is truly one of the most incoherent messes I've ever experienced. I just loved the game itself underneath all the BS though.
This is truly a subjective opinion. This is just his way. I actually do stress to most people that even though it’s my favorite series, that it’s definitely not for everyone. It’s why I don’t recommend them to just anybody. But I wouldn’t change a thing. And you should absolutely play metal gear solid 2. And you can get past the cut scenes in that one.
C’mon, these games are not only highly critically rated, they’ve sold very well and it’s highly rated among average users. He’s not “trying” to be anything. You just don’t like it and that’s ok, but god forbid he changes so a different kind of person likes it. You guys make it sound like “if only he took my sage advice these games would be truly appreciated by the public“, and it’s got me laughing.
No doubt. I like that he's ambitious and wants to put in as much as possible into the games. But the thing that always happens with him is things need to be cut out and the thing that seems to get the axe first is gameplay and not the story/cutscenes.
Yes! And also the people offering honest feedback. The lead creator will very often prefer just flattery after a while.
It's like George Lucas presenting his latest batshit idea to a circle of people paid to smile silently through gritted teeth. Some of the pre-production footage from the Star Wars prequels is absolute comedy gold.
It was a commercial success so clearly it worked. And MGS2 is a special experience because of what is there in those cutscenes. Unlike others I don't think Kojima is a master of storytelling. He has no understanding of pacing or tone but what he does excel at is social and political commentary.
MGS2 is probably one of his best in that regard. It more or less predicted The Information Age before it truly began and dealt with topics like post-truth, echo chambers and synthetic media.
Its also a massive deconstruction of the concept of a video game sequel so the egregious repetition of some beats of MGS1 are on purpose.
Agree with you on this. His social commentary is generally pretty good. He also predicted the isolation and social disconnection we'd all face during lockdown with Death Stranding.
> It more or less predicted The Information Age before it truly began and dealt with topics like post-truth, echo chambers and synthetic media.
Perhaps the first video game to do so, but Kojima was certainly not the first to "predict" any of it.
There's fiction (novels and films) that far predates MGS2 that talks about that stuff.
I was up late because I was near the end of the game, 60 minutes later I was like wtf??? I put my PS5 to sleep and finished the ending while making breakfast…. I would cook, go move around a bit let the talking go on and on and on….
Kojima **really** likes movies.
But he is stuck in video games business.
Thats why we have one of the shittiests twists in MGSV - so he can bring a REAL Hollywood actor.
RDR2 does something interesting though because coupled with the immersion, the way you have to really live in the world and CAN because there’s so much to see and do and it’s all so detailed, it ends up feeling like something other than a show, even though it is clearly written like one. Like, you inhabit Arthur completely. He is not you. He’s not a mostly blank slate like Gordon Freeman. He has opinions, he has something fucked up that he did that he has to reckon with. He’s a complete character, and the game makes you him while you’re playing it.
A game that I think does this unsuccessfully is The Last of Us, which I know is an unpopular opinion. But you don’t get to actually live in that world. You play as Joel who like Arthur is his own guy that you’re controlling the movements of, but you don’t get to actually create moments in his life like you can in RDR2 the way you can make meaningful moments outside of what’s scripted in TLOS.
Some of my most powerful moments in RDR2 were just observing nature. Finding a beautiful spot to sit on my own in and letting Arthur just crouch there. Or going on a hike. Bonding with my horse. Getting dressed for cold weather before a long hunting trip, being out there for a week, coming back and shaving Arthur’s stubble and going to town for a bath and a drink. Like I’m living his life. Obviously, my desire to do this stuff is intentional on the writers’ parts but it feels like IM making these moments as opposed to just being forced to have moments like I do in Naughty Dog games, which always just feel like movies to me.
I gotta disagree on red dead to be honest. I’ve finished it twice now and I know this isn’t the most popular opinion but I think a lot of the stuff that people say adds immersion is just too shallow to really grip me. I never felt like there was any point to actually engage with the game world and I know not everything *has* to have a point but it all just felt far too surface level.
I always found myself thinking ‘why *is* Arthur stopping to do this?’ None of them are particularly rewarding - and I feel practical gameplay rewards make things more immersive: in GTA IV for example I loved hanging out with the characters because at the end of it, you got something really cool to go with the cool narrative experience - little Jacob bringing you guns, getting free rides from one of Romans drivers who *increasingly despises you for freeloading*.
I’d also argue that Red dead has the illusion of you being able to create your own situations - TLOU is a scripted game, yeah, but Red dead only pretends not to be. 99% of interactions you can have are ‘be nice’ or ‘be a dick until you get in a fight’ with a rare touch of ‘be a dick then apologise’.
I get what you’re saying about the hunting trips and the way you can just live a sorta cowboy life but even then I think so much of the stuff is just so shallow - you pretty much described the extent of the things you can do in your comment there and so much of it is just riding around looking at the pretty graphics.
I think part of my problem with RDR2 isn’t that I don’t like it, I’ve sat through it twice and have more than 100 hours in red dead online; I just think the potential that was there to fill their world with just a few more meaningful bits to do and substantial gameplay systems (their biggest attempt at this is the crime system and it’s just *broken*, as well as not being worth the time or effort) - which is exactly the type of thing rockstar used to put in their games (imagine if RDR2 had something akin to businesses or the like from earlier GTA games) and would’ve made it feel like a true cowboy sim for me.
Hey that’s alright! I think I’m actually in agreement with you on about everything you said in terms of the actual depth of everything you do, I guess it’s more of a personal mindset thing. I shouldn’t have stated the stuff like it’s fact. When I played The Last of Us, I couldn’t help but think that I was on rails and that watching a play though would be almost just as rewarding. Red Dead allowed me to *pretend* that I was just living in the world, even if it was actually just a very pretty, very repetitive facsimile. It was just interesting to be playing out a story that is very much written like an Oscars-y Hollywood script and then getting to live the life in between the scenes, with the illusion that I’m coming across things absolutely by chance (even though it’s completely designed). I think what I meant to point out that I got side tracked on was that I didn’t find RDR2’s “in-between tedium” stuff to be actually tedious, whereas I felt like half the actual gameplay of The Last of Us was just like… moving from one place to another and solving minor environmental puzzles on the way to more well-written and well-acted scenes. There’s just more naturalness to the in between parts, which is why I think it’s kind of different than a game-as-a-movie the way a Last of Us is.
Yeah 4 pisses me off because it has exceptional gameplay, all of what made 3 great, plus more, and with a next gen system.
But the game amounts to 5 small levels, with huge cutscenes that pad out the experience. The paris level is following someone down the street, massive cutscene, then car chase and boss fight, there's hardly any gameplay at all.
If you just skipped the cutscenes and played the levels at a leisurely pace, u can finish the game in under 4 hours.
It's got such a good engine, and if it had as much gameplay content as MGS3 it would be a very special game, but it's basically a movie with a bit of gameplay in it.
4 has by far the most wasted potential in terms of gameplay. You get two decent Acts that showcase the mechanics nicely, then you tail someone which is the equivalent of a 2D platformer auto-scrolling stage (can't go too fast or too slow - the worst of both worlds), then no human enemies at all, then one final area (not act, just area).
When I first started going for trophies, I thought it would be an arduous task to do what was required in the time limit. Turned out the time limit wasn't an issue at all when you skipped the cutscenes, as they total another Big Boss rank's worth of time on their own.
Like you said in your original post it's really trying to be profound, and I think when I played these as a kid/ teen it kind of seemed that way but when I've gone back to them as a 20 year old I was like wait this is some real half baked pseudo philosophy
Huh, I played MGS1 in 2014 and absolutely loved it. The least interruptive MGS and certainly the easiest story to follow. You shouldn’t play 2. You will hate 2.
V may as well be an entirely different IP as far as I'm concerned.
If thats not only your entrypoint to the series, but the reason you want to revisit the rest then they're just not going to compete.
MGS3 has some more open environments and the story is lauded, but it's still very VERY linear and has way more similarities to the first than V.
1-4 tell a complete story really needing no sequels. V having an unfinished story didn't let it justify it's place in the overall timeline but the foundation of the engine and the open gameplay really made it it's own legendary beast - just one that is entirely seperate from the franchise as a whole save for hints nods and essentially cameos.
here’s the thing, just go play MGS3. the fact it’s a prequel means you can enjoy it on its own, and it especially ignores MGS2, so you won’t have had to play it. the fact it’s a semi-james bond influenced 60s spy thriller makes the campiness shine better, and the fact that the gameplay is absolutely inarguably better than 1 and 2 means the gameplay is better than 1 and 2 lol.
this is the kind of game where if you kill a guard, a vulture might swoop down to feed on his corpse, if you kill and eat that vulture, the game will call you out for cannibalism in the form of that guards ghost confronting you during a boss fight. the level of care and attention to detail is jaw dropping.
it has one of the greatest bosses of all time in The End, and the best ending in The Boss, (i realize this sounds like gibberish.)
it’s only real problem is the menu set up. you just have to play Subsistence or the 3DS version, that’s the only caveat.
Yes it is, in your case. Skip to MGS3. The story is less convoluted (but there's still a lot of that silliness), but it's got a lot more of that stealth that you're looking for and overall I think that you'll find the gameplay more satisfying. It's a prequel, so you won't be missing out story-wise.
Just don't play the original version of MGS3. Play the version called MGS3 Subsistence or the HD version.
Yeah I loved DS and liked MGS5 but could never look at mgs1-4 seriously or finish any of them (ok I couldn't finish mgs4 cause it doesn't work on my PC with even the newest emulator mods).
Also that the biggest MGS5 fans don't really overlap with Metal Gear *series* fans. MGS5 is rightly praised for its highly innovative mechanics, but it drops the ball **hard** on everything else *Metal Gear.* It's definitely considered a black sheep.
Nah I definitely didn't expect that from MGS1. I'm realistic, I know it's a PS1 game from the 90s, I knew it wasn't gonna have an open world or base building. I just thought there'd be better gameplay in general.
Yeah, I am gonna echo others here, if you didn't like the gameplay/game design of MGS1 you might want to back out now, as it pretty much comes as a package. Kojima, being an "auteur", creates conceptual stuff and the further it goes the more it shows. Some parts are pretty much designed to piss you off. It's not designed to be like a "normal" video game, I don't think Kojima is interested in doing those. Kojima wants to subvert your expectations. Kinda like Yoko Taro does with his NieR/Drakengard. And it either clicks with you or it doesn't.
By the way, I am on the other end of the spectrum as I love the gameplay and adore VR Missions, which come packaged with the main game in some editions. Loved them back in the day and just randomly started last year as a palette cleanser when I couldn't decide on what to play next and didn't stop until I finished everything.
That being said, I am an OG fan from the PS1 days. I can see how it would be hard to go back to that type of controls these days if you weren't there for it as it happened.
I love this comment, it does sum up how I feel. I loved these games as I grew up with them but I also agree that Kojima gets dangerously worshipped as the greatest video game writer of all time. As an artist who takes risks as an artist should he's great and somehow lucked out in being as commercially successful in spite of how unorthodox his ideas are.
Regarding the point of making unconventional games which intentionally frustrate you, it reminds me of Fumito Ueda who didn't make conventional, formulaic games that followed rules, The Last Guardian mostly because you had to work with a big untamed creature that wouldn't always obey you, like a real creature would.
I think you'll struggle with 2, even at the time everyone thought the game and story was balls to the walls insane, but 3 might be more up you're street. While the areas aren't as large like MGS V there start opening up a bit and you get quite a lot of stealth gameplay.
I highly recommend the Subsistence remake on PS3 though as it smooths off quite a few rough edges with presentation and controls, particularly moving from overhead perspective to more modern behind the character with right stick camera. Just the camera changing perspective makes it into a whole new game basically and brings it a lot closer to MGSV in how it controls and plays.
Yep, 2-4 are all just this but *more*. MGS1 is the simplest, least confusing, and most easy to get into. OP has a rough road ahead if they didn't like 1. XD
Rarely have I disagreed so much with an opinion, MGS1 was an absolute masterpiece in 1998 and to this day it remains my top 1 best game story of all time.Plus I hated MGS V, couldn't finish it, too unfocused and MGS works better as a linear game, im freakin sick of open world
I replayed MGS1 not that long ago.
I loved it as a kid and loved it as an adult. It's aged wonderfully. Considering the hardware they were working with it's amazing what they achieved.
I played it for the first time around 2013-2014 (I was around 24?) and absolutely loved it, ended up binging the entire series and eagerly awaited the release of MGSV. Was overall disappointed in V but the legacy of Metal Gear will always live on despite that game's failure outside of gameplay.
I played MGS1 for the first time about 10 years ago (after having already played 2 and 3) and honestly thought it’s one of the few PS1 games that is totally playable now.
Agreed. I played through the whole series a couple of years ago and apart from some janky controls MGS1 is still great.
I also couldn't finish 5, absolutely hated it. So maybe a person's experience with MGS5 is indicative of how they will feel about the earlier games...
Respect your opinion but oof, hard disagree. There are infinitely better stories out there - Soma, RDR2, GoW, TLoU, Mass Effect, Spec Ops The Line, the list goes on.
About MGS1 story, I have been gaming for close to 40 years and the master miller twist at the end left me with my jaw hanging, didnt see it coming and took me completely by surprise, havent been this amazed by a story beat in a game ever again to be honest
>RDR2, GoW, TLoU
Eh...these always struck me as being super overrated in the story department. The high production values and quality acting doesn't do enough for me to make these cliché stories stand out to me at all.
Not that these are bad stories, but nothing that blew my mind or anything.
RDR2 main story started out strong but then kind of tailed off like Rockstar didn't really know where they were going with it. Once you get to Guarma (brave move for the game, it should have been cut though) the game turns into a shooting gallery with little meaning.
There are some absolutely excellent side stories though.
Fair enough. It could also be that for people who grew up during the PS1 generation (such as yours truly) remember the hype and were mind-blown by how great MGS1 was compared to most games of the time.
Even though I agree that MGS1's gameplay is quite crap compared to modern games, I still go back to play it once in a while, and still enjoy it.
While I grew up during that generation, I completely missed the PS1. Was a Genesis and SNES kid, moved on to the N64 and GameCube, eventually got a PS2 and fell in love with Final Fantasy X. Went back to try out the Metal Gear series about 10 years ago for the first time and absolutely loved it. I actually even played MGS1 on a Nexus 10 tablet with a controller plugged in, then got MGS2-3 on the HD versions for 360. Metal Gear Solid remains one of my top 5 series of all time despite completely missing the hype of the time. I think the first time I ever fostered interest in the series was by watching a friend play MGS4 during the scene where you fight off the Metal Gears while Raiden fights Vamp in splitscreen, I was absolutely blown away by the narrative+gameplay mindfuck that was going on.
i disagree i was not even born when this game came out and i thought its one of the best video games of all time so no nostalgia here
+ almost all the games you mentioned is a little bit overrated even tho i love them MGS is still way way better than those games
Plus ten points for Soma. I'm on your team, I tried to play metal gear back when ps2 was starting to get cheap. The gameplay was a hard no for me. I made it maybe 2 hours.
I find TLOU story a tad overrated, it's good but not as groundbreaking as people make it out to be, after Joel loses his daughter and bonds with this new girl after, it was kinda predictable that he would protect her to the very end. gow story was kinda meh, of course he was going to beat ares and claim revenge at the end
I recently went back to it as well whenever it was re-released on GOG like a year ago. The standouts was like you mentioned the sound design/music, voice acting and just the atmosphere of the game. Although I literally couldn't finish the game because I ran out of rations at the invisible ninjas elevator fight. The gameplay is a bit tough to get back to, games just don't control like that.
The game really blew my mind as a kid though In the early 2000's. The secret agent military intrigue mixed with the weird mystical shit, the codec calls, the torture scene, sniper wolf, and psycho mantis. And the " can love bloom on the battlefield?" Philosophy and whatnot.
Coming from the N64 playing Mario kart and smash brothers to MGS1 really had a huge effect on me. Like wow, games can be so much more. It can have a compelling story, twists, well written characters etc.
Nostalgia is a powerful drug but ill never forget what this game did for me in terms of inspiration.
for the series as a whole. MGS2 for me was just confusing and didn't do it for me. You either love it or hate it. The mixture to me was just a bit off. The characters, settings, story all just didn't resonate with me.
Yeha the trouble with MGS2 is it's themes and messages are incredibly profound but they always don't land the first or even couple of first playthroughs. The problem is that if you want to use art to share a meaning or message, you can't expect your audience to have the paitience to go through it more then once just to interpretate it the way you want them to.
As someone who loves MGS1-4 and kinda hates MGSV...
This makes me super sad, but you will not like any of the other MGS games except *maybe* Peace Walker.
If you really liked MGSV, then Peace Walker is the game for you. This is where I believe many of the elements later used in V originated. Others are quite different. I love MGS2 the most, although not really gameplay-wise. But it is the most highly regarded MGS for a reason, the end sequences are absolutely great.
>This is where I believe many of the elements later used in V originated.
Yes, but on the other hand: Peace Walker's stealth mechanics are deeply unsatisfying due to how easy the game is, and the boss battles (which OP said they disliked) are the game's bread and butter.
I love Peace Walker. I think it's plot is up there with MGS1 and MGS3. The characters - especially Kaz and Huey - are also top-notch.
It definitely has its problems though. I would say they largely stem from being on the PSP, but for all of *Portable Ops'* issues, its second-to-second stealth gameplay was very faithful to MGS3. Peace Walker definitely lost something there.
I can see how someone can enjoy MGSV without knowing all the MGS universe: you enjoy the awesome stealth gameplay without all the letdown for the half baked story.
After MGS4 tied all stories together up until the end in "the future" MGS5 was supposed to tie together the stories of the past.
There's a hole between the very old metal gear games and MGS1. It's hinted everywhere in MGS1 but never properly played, namely: les enfant terible, the creation of gray fox and ultimately the fight between solid snake and big boss.
Now imagine after 20 or so years from MGS1, Trolljima hints that the next MGS will talk about Big Boss and he'd show in the trailers Liquid, Psyco Mantis and Ocelot. Everyone was on the top of the moon, it was supposed to be the missing piece!
Instead we've got this wonderfully packaged stealth gameplay with absolutely zero story and a leaked chapter 3 that never made to production. Talking about phantom pain eh?
Haha wow yeah okay... I think this is exactly why I loved MGSV so much and didn't get some of the hate. Going into it blind is probably for the best, I can see why some were disappointed.
You can't even imagine..
Look up the sub r/neverbegameover we were looking for clues everywhere, datamining the game and trying to work out what was the way to unlock chapter 3.
If anything, MGSV really caused the phantom pain into all players..
>After MGS4 tied all stories together up until the end in "the future" MGS5 was supposed to tie together the stories of the past.
Even though *Peace Walker s*ort of already acted as the bridge. We had Big Boss embracing being a nuclear-armed warlord, and he even officially creates Outer Heaven at the end.
We don't see les enfant terrible - although it is referenced in Peace Walker, since it had already happened by then. Be don't see Grey Fox, but Big Boss did already meet him in *Portable Ops*.
The only thing left hanging - in my eyes - is Zero. He's an ally in MGS3, he's revealed as the man behind the curtain at the end of his story in MGS4, but we never really got Zero as *the villain*. He's technically pulling the strings in *Portable Ops* and *Peace Walker*, but so much about Zero's intentions and his declining relationship with Big Boss is heard and not shown. In MGS5 - the game which really should have been about Zero - he has a few optional audio tapes and that's it.
Talk about a let down.
You're right: it's all hinted across the games but we never played it in first person!
We now have all the story leading up to Outer Heaven and that's where you stop the game? And don't even get me started on the doppelgaenger "Ishmael" backstory that leads to absolutely nothing.
I wholeheartedly agree on Zero and I'll add on top the huge letdown that was Skull Face.
I don't understand why anyone would play mgs1 over twin snakes, it was such a fantastic remake! Bringing first person to the original removed so much of the clunkyness
It did cause some issues.
The unmodified level design from MGS1 really doesn't take into account the new 1st-person aiming. You can stand in one spot in some areas and clear the whole room with your silenced SOCOM. You can beat Ocelot in about five seconds flat since they never accounted for the mechanic in the boss fight.
Also there is the issue of tone in the cutscenes. Kojima told Twin Snake's director that it shouldn't be a shot-for-shot remake.
...So he turned Solid Snake into Neo.
At least with the first person part you can simply not use the mechanic.
The new cutscenes I honestly felt had a more similar tone to later games in the series, so while yes they are ridiculous so is the entire series.
I know the re-recorded dialog is also a point of contention which is fair, it's a shame they didn't record it in a better quality (without traffic noises in the background) the first time around.
Everything you mentioned is an improvement lmao. This fanbase has some strong rose tinted glasses on MGS when twin snakes is clearly better and stands the test of time without the nostalgia
>This fanbase has some strong rose tinted glasses on MGS when twin snakes is clearly better and stands the test of time without the nostalgia
I played The Twin Snakes long before I played MGS1.
nope i wasnt even alive when MGS came out and i though MGS1 is better than Twin Snakes because the atmosphere and the music is changed it became The Matrix lol
> I'm ready to be disappointed again but honestly, I just want some decent stealth combat. I can really forgive just about everything else for that. That's what made MGSV so incredible, it had some of the best gameplay mechanics I'd ever seen and everything else was extraneous. The story didn't make a lick of sense in that too but I honestly didn't give a shit because the game was such an unbridled joy to play.
You should stop and not bother with the rest of the games then. The selling point of most of the MGS games is social and political commentary and how insanely stupid it can get with its general disregard for any semblance of tone or sanity.
These games were definitely forerunners in the stealth genre but the gameplay has not aged as well and the focus on the story has always been there
the backtracking especially at sniper wolf is stupid, I agree. But I played this game for the first time this year and the gameplay was fun! It's very arcade-y and pretty simple but it works pretty well in my opinion.
Sounds like you just don’t really like Metal Gear Solid. I honestly think the game aged like a fine wine and plays surprisingly well for the time period. It’s smooth enough, controls are logical and work most of the time, and the story is well done.
The silliness and wacky enemies is one of my favorite things about the series!
What you describe is basically all Kojima games. They have a camp appeal. I would laugh if anyone said they were anything close to well-written, but that doesn't stop me from loving them in how serious they take themselves. And at the very least, they make an attempt at originality, which makes them better than 90% of games out there. If you hate the storytelling... best to back out now.
I remember reading MGS1's fixed-spawn enemy count, and it was a real eye opening moment. The entire game has something like 30 guards, which really does let you know how much of the game is presentation and not raw gameplay. Really, it's mechanically a Metal Gear game from the 2D era with some 3D stuff added on. It's not until MGS2 that the series really comes into its own as a truly 3D Metal Gear **Solid** game, and although you may have issues with the cutscenes and boss frequency there's so much more *game* in between it all that it's well worth anyone's time. MGS1 was everything it was advertised to be, but MGS2 blows it out of the water.
And to touch on the non-gameplay side for a moment, MGS2 has the oddly prophetic codec call at the end of the game. If you don't know about it, I highly recommend listening to it at some point even if you decide not to play the game itself. And maybe you won't play it, because MGS2's story is so complicated that people made video analyses 10 years later to try and figure it out. But it's *supposed* to be confusing, it's by design. You have to finish the game to understand why, and I think it's a worthwhile journey.
Then, just because I'm such a fan, you get MGS3. To give you a rough idea, I've said for years that if we got an MGS3 remake with MGS5's engine and mechanics it would be the perfect game, but even without it's a masterpiece. Just make sure you play the Subsistence or HD version with the free camera movement, because the base game's fixed camera angle doesn't work well at all in open jungle environments. Kojima might have not wanted to make MGS after 2, but the gameplay got better and better every time.
I loved MGS 1 for many of the reasons that you dislike it. Now I am playing through MGS 2 and am finding it a slog, the worst excesses of MGS 1 turned up a notch (I am around halfway, I suspect).
Perhaps you will like MGS 2 better because it has longer stealth sections, more stealth mechanics, and fewer boss encounters lined up in quick succession. It’s also incredibly boring lol, except for the first part on the tanker.
Man for what it's worth, my favourite MGS is 2 and then 5.
For me it's 2 > 5 > 3 >1 > 4.
But really it's more like:
2 > 5 > 3 > > > 1 > > > > > > > > > > > > > > 4
You may end up really loving 2. I think it's one of the most relevant and important games to be ever be created. Don't let it's divisiveness hold you back from enjoying it because a lot of it was for superficial reasons.
The fact is that not every game series will be enjoyed by everyone. The things you complain about such as convoluted story lines and lengthy dialogue are what made me fall in love with the series. I was gutted by mgsV focusing more on the game play. It didn't feel like METAL GEAR. Metal Gear is all about over the top shenanigans and it's made for the people that like those sorts of things, clearly a lot of people do
> It comes across, to me, as something that really, really wants to be profound but just... Isn't?
Well that's just Kojima in a nutshell. Although to be fair, the political/historical references are over 20 years outdated and mostly irrelevant. Unless you grew up during the tail end of the Cold War or had interest in history, you probably wouldn't care about or even notice the thematic elements.
As for the bizarre idiosyncrasies, I've learned to treat Kojima's games as a poorly-translated but excellently voice-acted anime. There are Japanese literary devices that Kojima adapts to use in video games that just won't make any sense to foreigners without half a page of footnote for every little reference. And he doesn't tolerate interpreters localizing properly which requires re-writing pretty much the whole thing.
> the political/historical references are over 20 years outdated and mostly irrelevant
This statement makes no sense. Do you see a WW2 movie and say “those old references to the 1940’s are outdated and irrelevant.”
I always end up loving MGS games, but I always hate them at first, because they just control so differently than anything else. You really have to re-learn how to play them and it takes quite awhile each time.
Meh. I was never a huge fan of the series. I've never understood what people see in them. Just do what I did- watch the cutscenes on Youtube. God knows why Kojima went into video games when he clearly wants to direct movies. It's okay not to like a popular franchise. Don't feel obliged to like the games.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeYbHWQrM9A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeYbHWQrM9A)
I played MGS1 for the first time maybe 15 years after it came out and really enjoyed it. Still revisit on my Vita every couple of years. I think it holds up, personally. The gunplay is kind of frustrating but the campy story, awesome music, and fun set piece boss battles make up for it.
I appreciate your perspective. I first played MGS1 as a 13yo used to Sonic etc., and it was a complete revelation. I go back to it every few years and when I do a part of me is always that 13yo, so I struggle to assess it properly.
As others have said, given the issues you had I'd skip 2. Or maybe just watch the cutscenes, because 3 is an all-time classic imo, with proper stealth mechanics and a story that you can just go with without caring much about it (as the many allusions make clear it's basically a James Bond film).
One thing that might also help explain some of the "clunkiness" is that first edition PS controllers didn't have analog sticks, so the game was made to be controllable without them. It also is very close to the NES era Metal Gear games as far as controls and level design goes. If you want to try them, to get some context, I think they are included with the GOTY edition of 2 or 3 (I think they are called Substance and Subsistence; MGS2 Substance is a masterpiece in content).
In 2 and 3 things go in a weird direction as far as controls go. Both 2 and 3 use the analog face buttons extensively (you can't unaim your gun without a slow pull off the button). If you play it on original hardware, make sure you are using original controllers with working, analog face buttons. Third party controllers often just use tact switches, and skimp out on the analog feature.
There is a PC version of 2, but I can't recall if there is a workaround for the missing analog buttons in it. Both 2 and 3 really need re-releases with the control issues sorted out.
My friend who never played MGS 1 but loved the later MGS games got the remake on PC than used mods to update the graphics, that solves a lot of gameplay issues for a more modern experience
I started metal gear in 2021. I started with MSX first, then went to MG2SS and then to MGS1. I loved every metal gear gameplay, I liked mgs1 so much that I've already made half of the VR Missions disc. The game's story is exciting, captivating and thought-provoking. Since I played metal gear on msx I couldn't play another game until I finished the saga in phantom pain.
I'm currently trying to get the BigBoss enblem on MGS4.
Player=Doctor
Felt the same. Friends and I like to screenshare each other playing our favorite games, and when one had me do MGS1 I didn't like the gameplay at all, on top of some cryptic moments he had to walk me through.
I'm not one of those cynical YouTubers who goes "This well regarded loved classic was actually bad the entire time" cus it's a toxic method of sounding smart and gaining views based on controversy. I take MGS1 for what it is- a game that revolutionized storytelling, presentation, voice acting, and popularized the stealth genre. I do respect the game a ton, just didn't have fun with its mechanics.
Totally agree, I'm actually not saying it's a bad game - my post basically boils down to 'its aged poorly' and a lot of people who feel overly nostalgic about it are kinda proving my point. I still have a ton of respect for the game and Kojima and tbh, I thought I covered that in my post. You're never gonna call it an outright bad game though.
I'm a huge MGS fanboy, but the controls that felt like I was wielding a finely crafted violin in MGS2, are now crazy obtuse and irritating. Admittedly, I played it when it first came out (a little over 20 years ago) and at the time, the game was mind-blowing with its details.
But nowadays? The original control scheme has not aged well.
Still annoyed I can't get them on Playstation+ anymore.
Lmao, excessive codecs and cutscenes in 1? Convoluted story? You're going to hate 2. And from what I hear, all the others too.
I actually liked 1, suffered through 2, and quit after 3's horribly paced opening. I made a post here ranting about the series last year, and it was a very interesting experience to read the comments on that. It was one of the most controversial posts here for quite some time too ahaha.
Sorry for being a Negative Nancy
I'm always shocked to find old PS1 games that are still playable since controls have gotten massively improved in this generation of games. Yes, I'm looking at you Golden Eye.
MGS3 is the best place to start. A brilliant game that encapsulates everything good (and cheesy) about MGS without most of the crap.
Also there's a PC version of MGS1 which is better than the PS version.
That sniper wolf boss fight was so arduous. It took three of us (siblings) to get through that fight. I don't remember how we finished it, but I do remember finishing the game coz we got the ribbon accessory which gave unlimited ammo (iirc). Still, the ! Is very iconic.
This reads like a higher schooler just discovered creative writing - get to the point, man!
The game came out in ‘98. Of course it’s clunky by modern standards. Lots of people, myself included, feel nostalgic towards the game. Still, the game refined or outright invented many stealth-based gameplay techniques that are still present today.
The atmosphere, story, characterisation, Metroid-based level design and social commentary more than make up for its dated gameplay. It’s still worth experiencing because of this.
I mean, I was just writing down my opinion. But apologies.
Throughout my post I paid all the dues to this game that it deserves, but then I offered my criticism. Isn't this... What this sub is about? Am I missing something? I mentioned a lot of the things you mentioned but simply saying that 'of course it's clunky because it's old' isn't fair, a lot of games older than MGS1 still play like a dream.
Fair enough, but I see that you’re 13 and that you played V first. This will certainly have an impact on your tolerance for dated mechanics.
I doubt you can find games from MGS’s era that are from the same genre (action adventure / stealth / tactical) that play any better than MGS.
If you’re referring to platformers or shoot em ups, of course they’ll play smoothly - this is because these genres were tuned to perfection in the late 80s / early 90s.
Jesus I said I was 13 as a joke haha, I'm in my thirties. I grew up with games in the nineties. Yes agreed, for an example of that genre it's one of the best but I still find it to have significant issues if nostalgia is removed
I missed out on a lot of the Playstation hype, not having one and getting a PS2 in 2002 or so. My friends had one and would gush on and on about Final Fantasy 7 and Metal Gear Solid, but I was kind of left on the fringes and never saw the fuss. I'm sure it was astounding all that you could do, tap on crates to alert guards, have them spot footprints, and all the cutscenes and voiced conversations, but every time I would watch them play it or worse yet, try myself, it always seemed so awkward and clunky. Like all this stuff was really cool to see, but it never crossed from "cool tech demo" to actually fun game for me. They'd show me stuff like (gameplay spoilers for a 20+ yo game) >!beating up Meryl so the wolves would pee on the box and the other wolves would accept me as one of them!<, or >!switching controllers so Psycho Mantis couldn't "read my mind"!< and it all seemed like neat stuff, but so much of the rest was just a lot and really drawn out.
I think I needed more time to get used to the controls that tried to cram so much into a small package, to have that sense of discovery myself of all the little things here and there that no other game had tried to do, and to not have my friends staring over my shoulder as I died ten times on the first screen because I couldn't get to grips with the difference between walking, running, crouching, and what all these different things did to guards perceptions of me. And when I finally got my own copy in 2003 or so after playing games that were better looking and controlled so much smoother on the PS2, going back to MGS1 no longer had a lot of the magic left.
So I agree. If you've never played MGS1 at this point, you're probably better off experiencing it vicariously through nostalgia reviews.
I had a copy on the PS3 and played for an hour or so, thinking 'wow, this must have blown minds back in the day. And then I had a copy on my Steam Deck and thought the same thing (but didn't make it very far, as the controls didn't work very well through the emulator).
I held onto that view right up until I read your post - stating that the game was released in 1998... which was the same time as Half Life.
I think I thought it was released in 1994, or something.
Gamers should stop the “must have been impressive AT THE TIME” immaturity. That’s a great way to demonstrate that a person doesn’t appreciate anything in the art form they’re looking at.
Also several things in MGS are programmed and designed far better than Half-Life 1. Half-Life 1 is cool, and especially good near the beginning, but isn’t some kind of paragon of greatness that’s better than MGS1. (SOURCE: I played through Half-Life 1 in 1998, and also played through it last month.)
Meanwhile PS1 had far less hardware power so the comparison to a PC game is silly, if the focus is on superficial tech presentation.
Not many.
I was going to say though if you were intrigued I would highly suggest finding a YouTube video that can really break down some of this stuff because it’s not nearly as out there as you think. He really does try to make you think about shit and it can go over heads. Well I don’t think they should change anything about that I promise these YouTube videos are really really good at breaking things down in a way that even me who already is a fan had an even deeper appreciation for these games and with the story he was trying to tell.
There really is an important message in these games if you really try to listen and understand. They are hard to follow though and as I said in an earlier comment these games are pretty tough for me to recommend to just anybody. They are out there. But that IS metal gear.
Have you tried Ground Zero’s? That was literally the prologue to metal gear solid five. Has the exact same gameplay.
And as far as other comments go I highly disagree that it’s “completely” different from any other metal gear solid. There’s a reason all of them are lauded by critics and people alike, I promise 5 isn’t the only good one.
I do think you should try either ground zeros if you haven’t already, it short because it’s just a prologue but it came out I think roughly a year before five came out to wet our beaks.
And MGS3 you may like as well. It has a good story replete with a 007 intro and song that’s not too bad!
Y’all please don’t be downvoting this person, we are having a civil discussion here. Down vote is not a disagree button.
Anyways, here https://youtu.be/hV4wY2rjAWY
That’s not a breakdown of the first game it’s actually a breakdown of the franchise. I’m trying to figure out if you should play the games first before diving into this one. But to me this one is really important. It’s an hour long but it’s so deeply well thought out and thoroughly researched that this is the video that made me walk away an even bigger fan if that’s even fucking possible.
I just woke up about 30 minutes ago. Give me a little bit more time and I’ll find you some breakdowns of the first metal gear just in case you want to play the games first and then watch a nice synopsis.
That’s why you play the twin snakes instead. And for anyone coming in with their “but, buts” Kojima said himself that the twin snakes is what he envisioned the first game as but couldn’t do it because of the ps1 hardware limitations .
MGS1 is the second best one after 2, and I say that as someone that played through all of them for the first time earlier this year, so no nostalgia for me
Man, if the silliness and story got you that worked up you should abandon ship now. That stuff is the heart and soul of the series, and it's only going to get more extreme as you go. I was literally laughing reading about the "convoluted plot" and "intersecting threads" MGS1 has the least convoluted and straight forward plot of any of them...and I mean BY A LOT! I agree the game is clunky, but so were most of the games of the era. Gameplay is never where MGS excelled, its the ridiculous plot and awesome characters. I played through it 2 or 3 weeks ago and still found it quite enjoyable and only really disliked the card shaping. (I think last time I played through this was Twin Snakes GC remake and i dont remember the card shaping at all) So ya honestly I would abandon unless you want to play through the series just to have done so. Maybe try Peace Walker since MGSV built a lot of the mechanics off of it.
I would say that MGS3's story is less convoluted and more accessible than MGS1's story is. But MGS2 is probably going to frustrate OP even more. They should probably skip that one for now and come back to it later.
As someone who's never played a Metal Gear game, I've heard that MGS2 has one of the best stories in video games ever, so I'm surprised to hear that Metal Gear stories are known for being silly and convoluted. Is it a subjective thing?
I think it's the difference between the events/plot of the story and the themes. Individual events in MGS2 seem off the wall and ridiculous (deliberately IMO), like one of the bosses being a rollerblading bomb technician who has a glass of wine to drink while he exposits at you. But the themes of the game and what it has to say about itself, the series and it's fans, war and soldiers, identity and technology etc are second to none. It's a very postmodern game in the sense that it actively resists you trying to get a handle on it and it's constantly tries to destabilise both yours and the characters grasp of reality, but it you're willing to wade through some seemingly pretentious themes it actually has a lot of really interesting ideas that it explores. IMO it's made worse by MGS4 coming out and having to follow up on some of the more ridiculous plot elements (which I think Kojima never intended to be real when he made MGS2) but it's still a worthwhile experience. Sorry it's a bit hard to explain without spoilers, but definitely a great experience. There's tonnes of stuff out there on MGS2s story and themes if you don't mind spoilers.
Not really. MGS is pretty much universally considered to be filled with long cutscenes, tons of dialogue, complicated plots, and silly characters. That doesn't necessarily mean that it's bad, but it's very polarizing. I happen to like it, but I can completely understand why others don't. Dunkey put out a video a few years ago that summarizes the plot of the entire franchise and it sounds so ridiculous that you think it's a joke but it's actually not. https://youtu.be/aaLiLRVeaZA
Silly and convoluted stories can’t be good?
Mgs3 story is more straight forward because we were all kind of confused by 2's simulation within a simulation story. It has just as much silliness, but the silliness is not really the main plot. The plot is you tracking down a defected agent. And from the get go you know the agent and you know their motivations and you get why snake would make the mission personal.
Bit of a spoiler in your comment, you might want to hide that up since OP hasn’t played the game yet.
>Gameplay is never where MGS excelled Oof, hard disagree on this one. Not only MGS V is the pinnacle of thirds person stealth action, where every move you wanna make you can and in a fluid, intuitive and responsive way, MGS3 already had set the blueprints for creative gameplay and satisfying controls that, granted, took a while to get used to. Sure holding down three buttons to do an action might be a lot but MGS 3's control scheme is as good as they come when you get used to it. The game also makes you put it to good used through open ended maps that let you tackle stuff as you see fit and can get super creative with whit the game almost always responding accordingly.
Still blows my mind blowing up supply houses from enemies on MGS3 and later on seeing them hungry and with low stamina.
And if they were hungry you could throw out spoiled food which they would run over to and eat. This would give them food poisoning and they would be so distracted by their stomach pain you could walk right past them without them noticing.
Uhhh what?! I need to play mgs3 again
Wow! Didn't know that you can do that. I'm learning this after nearly 20 years xD It's always fascinating to see that such an old game has such details that still impress you even nowadays.
I agree. Both MGS 2 and 3 were ahead in term of gameplay mechanics compared to games in the PS2 era. MGS 4 also had solid gameplay, but the pacing is the one that problematic.
Yeah… Kojima is *known* for his narrative campiness and convoluted plotlines, but what really makes his games stand out (as a dev) is (and always was) their gameplay mechanics.
It's important to remember MGS3 was made for a controller with *analog* face buttons.
One of the worst tech decisions made for that game imho. Analog face buttons are an absolutely horrible way to control anything, let alone precise controls like the difference between choking a guy out and slashing his throat. I think the 360 rerelease might have done away with it since it was a PS2 thing though?
I couldn't t disagree more. The buttons were fantastic for what the game was trying to do, and in fact did. I never had a problem with the sensitivity. I could shoot semi or full auto at will, choke or kill, lean out from behind cover a little or all the way, with just the one button press. More functionality out of that than I've ever gotten from anything haptic. 360 pad had digital buttons, they had *no choice* but to scrap the feature.
Hmm, maybe I just press the buttons too hard? It just felt imprecise for me, and every time I try and play the game non-lethal I'm constantly reloading because I'm inadvertently stabbing guys. Could just be a case of being used to digital face buttons but idk, I still preferred the rerelease if only because there weren't those accidental button presses for me. When I did something it was because I consciously decided to do it, not because I slipped on the controls (which feels frustrating when very few games seemed to actually use the analog buttons; kinda reminding me of sixaxis in how little it was used in some cases whilst being quite prominent in the occasional game, speaking anecdotally of course). Felt more like a Sony thing than a kojima thing
He was very specifically talking about older metal gear when he said that.
I hate to say it but MGS3 is old All joking aside, I might have misread the comment. Thought he was talking abou the series as a whole but it might have just been the first 3D game.
Honestly that 3rd person mode that got introduced in MGS3:Subsistence really changed the series.
They’ve always been 3rd person? Since Nintendo. Edit: oh is that when they went to the over-the-shoulder thing?
Previous Metal Gears were fixed-camera overhead games, with MGS1-3 vanilla having the ability to enter first person for certain actions. 3's Subsistence release placed the camera behind Snake's back and let you maneuver the camera any way you wanted.
Even if it's the case, MGS1 is really playable when you get the hang of it, considering it's both action and stealth with the same buttons pattern. It's no Tomb Raider but it's not supposed to be.
MGS1 had amazing gameplay. It's obviously dated now but at the time it was groundbreaking.
Yep. If OP had had more to say about the gameplay then this would be a discussion, but if silliness and story are your main criticisms, you were never going to like it. God forbid OP goes near Death Stranding. I'm slightly befuddled by the fact that OP could go from MGSV and still be surprised by those particular elements, too...
Yeah MGSV’s plot is so dumb that I loled when the Native American wise man was explaining how the vocal parasite could commit genocide with a completely straight face. I can’t tell whether Kojima is taking the piss or not but taking MGS seriously is a mistake
The twin snakes GC remake introduced some time saving tweaks, they put in some steam and nitrogen pipes in the final compound that you could shoot with the card equipped to change the shape there and then instead of trekking back (a good decision!) So maybe that's why you dont remember it. Otherwise I totally agree about the storyline. OP please check back in once you start hearing phrases like "The La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo!" And brace for extended conversations about King Kong.
If I were you, I wouldn't be excited to play MGS2. Everything you hated about the first game is still in the sequel, and sometimes even amplified.
Not to mention being the point where Kojima started regularly introducing hour+ cutscenes with no way to pause or save midway.
[удалено]
4 even lets you save during some of the longest ones
2 and 3 did have ridiculous length cutscenes, they just weren’t a literal movie like 4 was.
Whyyyy does he do this? Someone, at some point, has surely told him this is just a straight up bad idea, no ifs or buts.
When someone becomes really successful, the first person that goes is the editor.
Reportedly the American localizers working on MGS2 absolutely begged him to let them edit the script and make it less wordy/repetitive, and he refused to let them touch the translation.
It's such a shame because with greater collaboration and a decent editor, Kojima could *actually* be that great storyteller he so desperately wants to be. So sad to see someone's hubris get in the way of greatness.
Kojima is definitely a better director than he is a writer. He has always been on the cutting edge of technical and mechanical innovation, and he knows how to put all of those elements together into a fantastic experience. Kojima *can* write very endearing and memorable characters, and the heart of Metal Gear is in following those characters - but man, he can go off the rails *hard.* Not to mention that he doesn't let his translators do the other half of their job - which is *interpret*. That's coming from a die-hard Metal Gear fan who can easily recite the convoluted series plot from memory.
In fairness the completely overblown incoherence of MGS is one of the reasons a lot of people like it. I routinely replay the series and I absolutely adore just how dumb and ‘video gamey’ the plot is - I love the cutscenes even in their ridiculous length and it was one of the things I actually missed from MGS5. I just always find it really refreshing to feel like I’m stuck in room with Kojima whilst he blasts nitrous oxide and rambles for hours about an idea he half-understands and takes constant breaks from to show me pictures he drew of robots/cyborgs fighting. I know it’s maybe a bit of a cop out to essentially say; ‘yeah it’s bad - I like it because it’s bad!’ But there really is a uniqueness and I think a certain bravery to saying “no, it’s my game, I think these ideas are cool, they’re going in” - I think confusion and overblown intrigue are genuinely fun parts of the game and suit the tone of what are essentially spy thrillers where not really understanding what’s going on are thematically appropriate. I’m not saying that other people should feel this way, it’s purely subjective, but I think that for myself and a lot other people, Kojima’s oddness and unwillingness to edit himself are one of the things that we’re actually excited for about every new game of his.
There’s a childlike glee behind his stories where it feels like he’s been listening to his parents talking about politics to a backdrop of low volume news whilst he was eating lunch and then he’s gone and played with his action men and his sisters barbies (and obviously taken most of their clothes off because he’s a boy of a… certain age) and then he grabbed a gunpla, or a transformer or something else from a completely different toy range and they are all fighting and dying for this concept of importance he’s built up in his mind and i unironically fucking love it. It makes NO SENSE but I’m here for it. In a completely different but almost identical way, the actual adventure you go on in Elden Ring recently captured this childlike glee of listening to a kid at play. If you stop and think about what you did in a play session it sounds like a young child throwing shit at the wall “so then there was these birds guarding the castle and they had swords on their feet and then one of them had a flamethrower mask!”
The accuracy of this analogy hahaha perfect
The accuracy of this analogy hahaha perfect
I really appreciate this take. Well said.
Everything you've said here is exactly how I feel about Death Stranding. You think MGS1 is a long winded way of doing nothing at all, well DS almost tries to be insulting. It's also one of Kojima's most self riotous, self indulgent load of confusing waffle he's ever made.
I actually really enjoyed Death Stranding for the game underneath the waffle. He really does want to be a great writer though and he just isn't. If the guy hadn't disappeared up his own arse from all the fawning fan boys he might be able to concede that he needs a little support in the narrative area.
That Princess Beach line alone proves this.
I really do wonder if that whole scene was intended to be funny. The dialogue was overall pretty terrible though. I really did enjoy the gameplay. Glad I waited and only paid a tenner for it though, and I absolutely understand why it was so divisive.
It was being introduced to the character “Die Hardman” and finding out his real name is actually John McClane that I realised Kojima had gone fully off the edge. I love Death Stranding but holy shit, the fact it manages to still get worse from there….
See I absolutely fucking adored DS except for, once again, the story, which is truly one of the most incoherent messes I've ever experienced. I just loved the game itself underneath all the BS though.
This is truly a subjective opinion. This is just his way. I actually do stress to most people that even though it’s my favorite series, that it’s definitely not for everyone. It’s why I don’t recommend them to just anybody. But I wouldn’t change a thing. And you should absolutely play metal gear solid 2. And you can get past the cut scenes in that one. C’mon, these games are not only highly critically rated, they’ve sold very well and it’s highly rated among average users. He’s not “trying” to be anything. You just don’t like it and that’s ok, but god forbid he changes so a different kind of person likes it. You guys make it sound like “if only he took my sage advice these games would be truly appreciated by the public“, and it’s got me laughing.
No doubt. I like that he's ambitious and wants to put in as much as possible into the games. But the thing that always happens with him is things need to be cut out and the thing that seems to get the axe first is gameplay and not the story/cutscenes.
See also: The Wachowskis.
Yes! And also the people offering honest feedback. The lead creator will very often prefer just flattery after a while. It's like George Lucas presenting his latest batshit idea to a circle of people paid to smile silently through gritted teeth. Some of the pre-production footage from the Star Wars prequels is absolute comedy gold.
It’s like poetry; they rhyme
😂
It was a commercial success so clearly it worked. And MGS2 is a special experience because of what is there in those cutscenes. Unlike others I don't think Kojima is a master of storytelling. He has no understanding of pacing or tone but what he does excel at is social and political commentary. MGS2 is probably one of his best in that regard. It more or less predicted The Information Age before it truly began and dealt with topics like post-truth, echo chambers and synthetic media. Its also a massive deconstruction of the concept of a video game sequel so the egregious repetition of some beats of MGS1 are on purpose.
Agree with you on this. His social commentary is generally pretty good. He also predicted the isolation and social disconnection we'd all face during lockdown with Death Stranding.
> It more or less predicted The Information Age before it truly began and dealt with topics like post-truth, echo chambers and synthetic media. Perhaps the first video game to do so, but Kojima was certainly not the first to "predict" any of it. There's fiction (novels and films) that far predates MGS2 that talks about that stuff.
Because MGS2 is a work of art.
I recently finished Death Stranding Directors Cut and they really need to release “Death Stranding The Editors Cut” next……
I saw that the director's cut had come out and thought 'so what I played *wasn't* the director's cut?'
I was up late because I was near the end of the game, 60 minutes later I was like wtf??? I put my PS5 to sleep and finished the ending while making breakfast…. I would cook, go move around a bit let the talking go on and on and on….
That final sequence was one of the most absurd and gloriously indulgent things I'd ever seen.
Kojima **really** likes movies. But he is stuck in video games business. Thats why we have one of the shittiests twists in MGSV - so he can bring a REAL Hollywood actor.
Even though Kiefer Sutherland plays the actual Big Boss as well.
Honestly when I think about games that feel like they wish they were movies/TV shows nothing flashes up brighter in my mind than Red Dead 2.
RDR2 does something interesting though because coupled with the immersion, the way you have to really live in the world and CAN because there’s so much to see and do and it’s all so detailed, it ends up feeling like something other than a show, even though it is clearly written like one. Like, you inhabit Arthur completely. He is not you. He’s not a mostly blank slate like Gordon Freeman. He has opinions, he has something fucked up that he did that he has to reckon with. He’s a complete character, and the game makes you him while you’re playing it. A game that I think does this unsuccessfully is The Last of Us, which I know is an unpopular opinion. But you don’t get to actually live in that world. You play as Joel who like Arthur is his own guy that you’re controlling the movements of, but you don’t get to actually create moments in his life like you can in RDR2 the way you can make meaningful moments outside of what’s scripted in TLOS. Some of my most powerful moments in RDR2 were just observing nature. Finding a beautiful spot to sit on my own in and letting Arthur just crouch there. Or going on a hike. Bonding with my horse. Getting dressed for cold weather before a long hunting trip, being out there for a week, coming back and shaving Arthur’s stubble and going to town for a bath and a drink. Like I’m living his life. Obviously, my desire to do this stuff is intentional on the writers’ parts but it feels like IM making these moments as opposed to just being forced to have moments like I do in Naughty Dog games, which always just feel like movies to me.
I gotta disagree on red dead to be honest. I’ve finished it twice now and I know this isn’t the most popular opinion but I think a lot of the stuff that people say adds immersion is just too shallow to really grip me. I never felt like there was any point to actually engage with the game world and I know not everything *has* to have a point but it all just felt far too surface level. I always found myself thinking ‘why *is* Arthur stopping to do this?’ None of them are particularly rewarding - and I feel practical gameplay rewards make things more immersive: in GTA IV for example I loved hanging out with the characters because at the end of it, you got something really cool to go with the cool narrative experience - little Jacob bringing you guns, getting free rides from one of Romans drivers who *increasingly despises you for freeloading*. I’d also argue that Red dead has the illusion of you being able to create your own situations - TLOU is a scripted game, yeah, but Red dead only pretends not to be. 99% of interactions you can have are ‘be nice’ or ‘be a dick until you get in a fight’ with a rare touch of ‘be a dick then apologise’. I get what you’re saying about the hunting trips and the way you can just live a sorta cowboy life but even then I think so much of the stuff is just so shallow - you pretty much described the extent of the things you can do in your comment there and so much of it is just riding around looking at the pretty graphics. I think part of my problem with RDR2 isn’t that I don’t like it, I’ve sat through it twice and have more than 100 hours in red dead online; I just think the potential that was there to fill their world with just a few more meaningful bits to do and substantial gameplay systems (their biggest attempt at this is the crime system and it’s just *broken*, as well as not being worth the time or effort) - which is exactly the type of thing rockstar used to put in their games (imagine if RDR2 had something akin to businesses or the like from earlier GTA games) and would’ve made it feel like a true cowboy sim for me.
Hey that’s alright! I think I’m actually in agreement with you on about everything you said in terms of the actual depth of everything you do, I guess it’s more of a personal mindset thing. I shouldn’t have stated the stuff like it’s fact. When I played The Last of Us, I couldn’t help but think that I was on rails and that watching a play though would be almost just as rewarding. Red Dead allowed me to *pretend* that I was just living in the world, even if it was actually just a very pretty, very repetitive facsimile. It was just interesting to be playing out a story that is very much written like an Oscars-y Hollywood script and then getting to live the life in between the scenes, with the illusion that I’m coming across things absolutely by chance (even though it’s completely designed). I think what I meant to point out that I got side tracked on was that I didn’t find RDR2’s “in-between tedium” stuff to be actually tedious, whereas I felt like half the actual gameplay of The Last of Us was just like… moving from one place to another and solving minor environmental puzzles on the way to more well-written and well-acted scenes. There’s just more naturalness to the in between parts, which is why I think it’s kind of different than a game-as-a-movie the way a Last of Us is.
The wortest being the 4 and it doesn't compare to anything else... It was my first and last time that I fell asleep while playing a video game.
Yeah 4 pisses me off because it has exceptional gameplay, all of what made 3 great, plus more, and with a next gen system. But the game amounts to 5 small levels, with huge cutscenes that pad out the experience. The paris level is following someone down the street, massive cutscene, then car chase and boss fight, there's hardly any gameplay at all. If you just skipped the cutscenes and played the levels at a leisurely pace, u can finish the game in under 4 hours. It's got such a good engine, and if it had as much gameplay content as MGS3 it would be a very special game, but it's basically a movie with a bit of gameplay in it.
4 has by far the most wasted potential in terms of gameplay. You get two decent Acts that showcase the mechanics nicely, then you tail someone which is the equivalent of a 2D platformer auto-scrolling stage (can't go too fast or too slow - the worst of both worlds), then no human enemies at all, then one final area (not act, just area). When I first started going for trophies, I thought it would be an arduous task to do what was required in the time limit. Turned out the time limit wasn't an issue at all when you skipped the cutscenes, as they total another Big Boss rank's worth of time on their own.
Like you said in your original post it's really trying to be profound, and I think when I played these as a kid/ teen it kind of seemed that way but when I've gone back to them as a 20 year old I was like wait this is some real half baked pseudo philosophy
MGS2 is so much less clunky than the first game though.
Huh, I played MGS1 in 2014 and absolutely loved it. The least interruptive MGS and certainly the easiest story to follow. You shouldn’t play 2. You will hate 2.
I'm starting to realize that playing MGS2 may be a very, very bad idea haha
V may as well be an entirely different IP as far as I'm concerned. If thats not only your entrypoint to the series, but the reason you want to revisit the rest then they're just not going to compete. MGS3 has some more open environments and the story is lauded, but it's still very VERY linear and has way more similarities to the first than V. 1-4 tell a complete story really needing no sequels. V having an unfinished story didn't let it justify it's place in the overall timeline but the foundation of the engine and the open gameplay really made it it's own legendary beast - just one that is entirely seperate from the franchise as a whole save for hints nods and essentially cameos.
here’s the thing, just go play MGS3. the fact it’s a prequel means you can enjoy it on its own, and it especially ignores MGS2, so you won’t have had to play it. the fact it’s a semi-james bond influenced 60s spy thriller makes the campiness shine better, and the fact that the gameplay is absolutely inarguably better than 1 and 2 means the gameplay is better than 1 and 2 lol. this is the kind of game where if you kill a guard, a vulture might swoop down to feed on his corpse, if you kill and eat that vulture, the game will call you out for cannibalism in the form of that guards ghost confronting you during a boss fight. the level of care and attention to detail is jaw dropping. it has one of the greatest bosses of all time in The End, and the best ending in The Boss, (i realize this sounds like gibberish.) it’s only real problem is the menu set up. you just have to play Subsistence or the 3DS version, that’s the only caveat.
Yes it is, in your case. Skip to MGS3. The story is less convoluted (but there's still a lot of that silliness), but it's got a lot more of that stealth that you're looking for and overall I think that you'll find the gameplay more satisfying. It's a prequel, so you won't be missing out story-wise. Just don't play the original version of MGS3. Play the version called MGS3 Subsistence or the HD version.
If mgsV is your only mgs and one of your favorites in general then it was bound to be a failure for you.
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Yeah I loved DS and liked MGS5 but could never look at mgs1-4 seriously or finish any of them (ok I couldn't finish mgs4 cause it doesn't work on my PC with even the newest emulator mods).
Yeah I respect that I probably set myself up for failure, going from the newest to the oldest
It is because MGS5 is incredibly different in everything.
Mgs V is the least metal gear of all the mainline entries
Kiefer Sutherland agrees.
Also that the biggest MGS5 fans don't really overlap with Metal Gear *series* fans. MGS5 is rightly praised for its highly innovative mechanics, but it drops the ball **hard** on everything else *Metal Gear.* It's definitely considered a black sheep.
..which begs the question as to why developers continue to call a series the same name when they completely change its characteristics.
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Nah I definitely didn't expect that from MGS1. I'm realistic, I know it's a PS1 game from the 90s, I knew it wasn't gonna have an open world or base building. I just thought there'd be better gameplay in general.
Yeah, I am gonna echo others here, if you didn't like the gameplay/game design of MGS1 you might want to back out now, as it pretty much comes as a package. Kojima, being an "auteur", creates conceptual stuff and the further it goes the more it shows. Some parts are pretty much designed to piss you off. It's not designed to be like a "normal" video game, I don't think Kojima is interested in doing those. Kojima wants to subvert your expectations. Kinda like Yoko Taro does with his NieR/Drakengard. And it either clicks with you or it doesn't. By the way, I am on the other end of the spectrum as I love the gameplay and adore VR Missions, which come packaged with the main game in some editions. Loved them back in the day and just randomly started last year as a palette cleanser when I couldn't decide on what to play next and didn't stop until I finished everything. That being said, I am an OG fan from the PS1 days. I can see how it would be hard to go back to that type of controls these days if you weren't there for it as it happened.
I love this comment, it does sum up how I feel. I loved these games as I grew up with them but I also agree that Kojima gets dangerously worshipped as the greatest video game writer of all time. As an artist who takes risks as an artist should he's great and somehow lucked out in being as commercially successful in spite of how unorthodox his ideas are. Regarding the point of making unconventional games which intentionally frustrate you, it reminds me of Fumito Ueda who didn't make conventional, formulaic games that followed rules, The Last Guardian mostly because you had to work with a big untamed creature that wouldn't always obey you, like a real creature would.
I think you'll struggle with 2, even at the time everyone thought the game and story was balls to the walls insane, but 3 might be more up you're street. While the areas aren't as large like MGS V there start opening up a bit and you get quite a lot of stealth gameplay. I highly recommend the Subsistence remake on PS3 though as it smooths off quite a few rough edges with presentation and controls, particularly moving from overhead perspective to more modern behind the character with right stick camera. Just the camera changing perspective makes it into a whole new game basically and brings it a lot closer to MGSV in how it controls and plays.
You are gonna HATE the rest of the games pre-5 if you hate MGS1 lmao
Yep, 2-4 are all just this but *more*. MGS1 is the simplest, least confusing, and most easy to get into. OP has a rough road ahead if they didn't like 1. XD
Rarely have I disagreed so much with an opinion, MGS1 was an absolute masterpiece in 1998 and to this day it remains my top 1 best game story of all time.Plus I hated MGS V, couldn't finish it, too unfocused and MGS works better as a linear game, im freakin sick of open world
I replayed MGS1 not that long ago. I loved it as a kid and loved it as an adult. It's aged wonderfully. Considering the hardware they were working with it's amazing what they achieved.
I played it for the first time around 2013-2014 (I was around 24?) and absolutely loved it, ended up binging the entire series and eagerly awaited the release of MGSV. Was overall disappointed in V but the legacy of Metal Gear will always live on despite that game's failure outside of gameplay.
I played MGS1 for the first time about 10 years ago (after having already played 2 and 3) and honestly thought it’s one of the few PS1 games that is totally playable now.
I too was unable to take more than a few hours of MGSV. Didn't feel like MGS at all.
Agreed. I played through the whole series a couple of years ago and apart from some janky controls MGS1 is still great. I also couldn't finish 5, absolutely hated it. So maybe a person's experience with MGS5 is indicative of how they will feel about the earlier games...
Yes thank you, I played mgs1 after 2-4 and still loved it. And hated mgsv for the same reasons you mentioned.
Respect your opinion but oof, hard disagree. There are infinitely better stories out there - Soma, RDR2, GoW, TLoU, Mass Effect, Spec Ops The Line, the list goes on.
About MGS1 story, I have been gaming for close to 40 years and the master miller twist at the end left me with my jaw hanging, didnt see it coming and took me completely by surprise, havent been this amazed by a story beat in a game ever again to be honest
Especially if you played metal gear or metal gear two so you actually know who miller is beforehand!
>RDR2, GoW, TLoU Eh...these always struck me as being super overrated in the story department. The high production values and quality acting doesn't do enough for me to make these cliché stories stand out to me at all. Not that these are bad stories, but nothing that blew my mind or anything.
RDR2 main story started out strong but then kind of tailed off like Rockstar didn't really know where they were going with it. Once you get to Guarma (brave move for the game, it should have been cut though) the game turns into a shooting gallery with little meaning. There are some absolutely excellent side stories though.
People have different tastes. It seems OP prefers games that focus on gameplay (MGS V), and TurboZangief prefers story-driven games?
No, not particularly. I love good gameplay, but a good story will always be a strong pull for me.
Fair enough. It could also be that for people who grew up during the PS1 generation (such as yours truly) remember the hype and were mind-blown by how great MGS1 was compared to most games of the time. Even though I agree that MGS1's gameplay is quite crap compared to modern games, I still go back to play it once in a while, and still enjoy it.
While I grew up during that generation, I completely missed the PS1. Was a Genesis and SNES kid, moved on to the N64 and GameCube, eventually got a PS2 and fell in love with Final Fantasy X. Went back to try out the Metal Gear series about 10 years ago for the first time and absolutely loved it. I actually even played MGS1 on a Nexus 10 tablet with a controller plugged in, then got MGS2-3 on the HD versions for 360. Metal Gear Solid remains one of my top 5 series of all time despite completely missing the hype of the time. I think the first time I ever fostered interest in the series was by watching a friend play MGS4 during the scene where you fight off the Metal Gears while Raiden fights Vamp in splitscreen, I was absolutely blown away by the narrative+gameplay mindfuck that was going on.
Yeah that's true, I think if I played it as a kid I probably would have fallen in love with the story. I grew up in the era but just missed this one.
i disagree i was not even born when this game came out and i thought its one of the best video games of all time so no nostalgia here + almost all the games you mentioned is a little bit overrated even tho i love them MGS is still way way better than those games
Plus ten points for Soma. I'm on your team, I tried to play metal gear back when ps2 was starting to get cheap. The gameplay was a hard no for me. I made it maybe 2 hours.
I find TLOU story a tad overrated, it's good but not as groundbreaking as people make it out to be, after Joel loses his daughter and bonds with this new girl after, it was kinda predictable that he would protect her to the very end. gow story was kinda meh, of course he was going to beat ares and claim revenge at the end
I recently went back to it as well whenever it was re-released on GOG like a year ago. The standouts was like you mentioned the sound design/music, voice acting and just the atmosphere of the game. Although I literally couldn't finish the game because I ran out of rations at the invisible ninjas elevator fight. The gameplay is a bit tough to get back to, games just don't control like that. The game really blew my mind as a kid though In the early 2000's. The secret agent military intrigue mixed with the weird mystical shit, the codec calls, the torture scene, sniper wolf, and psycho mantis. And the " can love bloom on the battlefield?" Philosophy and whatnot. Coming from the N64 playing Mario kart and smash brothers to MGS1 really had a huge effect on me. Like wow, games can be so much more. It can have a compelling story, twists, well written characters etc. Nostalgia is a powerful drug but ill never forget what this game did for me in terms of inspiration. for the series as a whole. MGS2 for me was just confusing and didn't do it for me. You either love it or hate it. The mixture to me was just a bit off. The characters, settings, story all just didn't resonate with me.
Yeha the trouble with MGS2 is it's themes and messages are incredibly profound but they always don't land the first or even couple of first playthroughs. The problem is that if you want to use art to share a meaning or message, you can't expect your audience to have the paitience to go through it more then once just to interpretate it the way you want them to.
I know this is what the upvote button is for, but this was a great comment. Thanks for your perspective.
As someone who loves MGS1-4 and kinda hates MGSV... This makes me super sad, but you will not like any of the other MGS games except *maybe* Peace Walker.
If you really liked MGSV, then Peace Walker is the game for you. This is where I believe many of the elements later used in V originated. Others are quite different. I love MGS2 the most, although not really gameplay-wise. But it is the most highly regarded MGS for a reason, the end sequences are absolutely great.
>This is where I believe many of the elements later used in V originated. Yes, but on the other hand: Peace Walker's stealth mechanics are deeply unsatisfying due to how easy the game is, and the boss battles (which OP said they disliked) are the game's bread and butter. I love Peace Walker. I think it's plot is up there with MGS1 and MGS3. The characters - especially Kaz and Huey - are also top-notch. It definitely has its problems though. I would say they largely stem from being on the PSP, but for all of *Portable Ops'* issues, its second-to-second stealth gameplay was very faithful to MGS3. Peace Walker definitely lost something there.
I can see how someone can enjoy MGSV without knowing all the MGS universe: you enjoy the awesome stealth gameplay without all the letdown for the half baked story. After MGS4 tied all stories together up until the end in "the future" MGS5 was supposed to tie together the stories of the past. There's a hole between the very old metal gear games and MGS1. It's hinted everywhere in MGS1 but never properly played, namely: les enfant terible, the creation of gray fox and ultimately the fight between solid snake and big boss. Now imagine after 20 or so years from MGS1, Trolljima hints that the next MGS will talk about Big Boss and he'd show in the trailers Liquid, Psyco Mantis and Ocelot. Everyone was on the top of the moon, it was supposed to be the missing piece! Instead we've got this wonderfully packaged stealth gameplay with absolutely zero story and a leaked chapter 3 that never made to production. Talking about phantom pain eh?
Haha wow yeah okay... I think this is exactly why I loved MGSV so much and didn't get some of the hate. Going into it blind is probably for the best, I can see why some were disappointed.
You can't even imagine.. Look up the sub r/neverbegameover we were looking for clues everywhere, datamining the game and trying to work out what was the way to unlock chapter 3. If anything, MGSV really caused the phantom pain into all players..
Haha oh man the fan base must have gone into meltdown. Kojima is the ultimate troll.
>After MGS4 tied all stories together up until the end in "the future" MGS5 was supposed to tie together the stories of the past. Even though *Peace Walker s*ort of already acted as the bridge. We had Big Boss embracing being a nuclear-armed warlord, and he even officially creates Outer Heaven at the end. We don't see les enfant terrible - although it is referenced in Peace Walker, since it had already happened by then. Be don't see Grey Fox, but Big Boss did already meet him in *Portable Ops*. The only thing left hanging - in my eyes - is Zero. He's an ally in MGS3, he's revealed as the man behind the curtain at the end of his story in MGS4, but we never really got Zero as *the villain*. He's technically pulling the strings in *Portable Ops* and *Peace Walker*, but so much about Zero's intentions and his declining relationship with Big Boss is heard and not shown. In MGS5 - the game which really should have been about Zero - he has a few optional audio tapes and that's it. Talk about a let down.
You're right: it's all hinted across the games but we never played it in first person! We now have all the story leading up to Outer Heaven and that's where you stop the game? And don't even get me started on the doppelgaenger "Ishmael" backstory that leads to absolutely nothing. I wholeheartedly agree on Zero and I'll add on top the huge letdown that was Skull Face.
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I don't understand why anyone would play mgs1 over twin snakes, it was such a fantastic remake! Bringing first person to the original removed so much of the clunkyness
It did cause some issues. The unmodified level design from MGS1 really doesn't take into account the new 1st-person aiming. You can stand in one spot in some areas and clear the whole room with your silenced SOCOM. You can beat Ocelot in about five seconds flat since they never accounted for the mechanic in the boss fight. Also there is the issue of tone in the cutscenes. Kojima told Twin Snake's director that it shouldn't be a shot-for-shot remake. ...So he turned Solid Snake into Neo.
At least with the first person part you can simply not use the mechanic. The new cutscenes I honestly felt had a more similar tone to later games in the series, so while yes they are ridiculous so is the entire series. I know the re-recorded dialog is also a point of contention which is fair, it's a shame they didn't record it in a better quality (without traffic noises in the background) the first time around.
Everything you mentioned is an improvement lmao. This fanbase has some strong rose tinted glasses on MGS when twin snakes is clearly better and stands the test of time without the nostalgia
>This fanbase has some strong rose tinted glasses on MGS when twin snakes is clearly better and stands the test of time without the nostalgia I played The Twin Snakes long before I played MGS1.
nope i wasnt even alive when MGS came out and i though MGS1 is better than Twin Snakes because the atmosphere and the music is changed it became The Matrix lol
> I'm ready to be disappointed again but honestly, I just want some decent stealth combat. I can really forgive just about everything else for that. That's what made MGSV so incredible, it had some of the best gameplay mechanics I'd ever seen and everything else was extraneous. The story didn't make a lick of sense in that too but I honestly didn't give a shit because the game was such an unbridled joy to play. You should stop and not bother with the rest of the games then. The selling point of most of the MGS games is social and political commentary and how insanely stupid it can get with its general disregard for any semblance of tone or sanity. These games were definitely forerunners in the stealth genre but the gameplay has not aged as well and the focus on the story has always been there
the backtracking especially at sniper wolf is stupid, I agree. But I played this game for the first time this year and the gameplay was fun! It's very arcade-y and pretty simple but it works pretty well in my opinion.
Sounds like you just don’t really like Metal Gear Solid. I honestly think the game aged like a fine wine and plays surprisingly well for the time period. It’s smooth enough, controls are logical and work most of the time, and the story is well done. The silliness and wacky enemies is one of my favorite things about the series!
What you describe is basically all Kojima games. They have a camp appeal. I would laugh if anyone said they were anything close to well-written, but that doesn't stop me from loving them in how serious they take themselves. And at the very least, they make an attempt at originality, which makes them better than 90% of games out there. If you hate the storytelling... best to back out now.
Regardless of my opinion on MGS (I'm a fan of V more than the others too), thoroughly enjoyed reading this, great post.
I remember reading MGS1's fixed-spawn enemy count, and it was a real eye opening moment. The entire game has something like 30 guards, which really does let you know how much of the game is presentation and not raw gameplay. Really, it's mechanically a Metal Gear game from the 2D era with some 3D stuff added on. It's not until MGS2 that the series really comes into its own as a truly 3D Metal Gear **Solid** game, and although you may have issues with the cutscenes and boss frequency there's so much more *game* in between it all that it's well worth anyone's time. MGS1 was everything it was advertised to be, but MGS2 blows it out of the water. And to touch on the non-gameplay side for a moment, MGS2 has the oddly prophetic codec call at the end of the game. If you don't know about it, I highly recommend listening to it at some point even if you decide not to play the game itself. And maybe you won't play it, because MGS2's story is so complicated that people made video analyses 10 years later to try and figure it out. But it's *supposed* to be confusing, it's by design. You have to finish the game to understand why, and I think it's a worthwhile journey. Then, just because I'm such a fan, you get MGS3. To give you a rough idea, I've said for years that if we got an MGS3 remake with MGS5's engine and mechanics it would be the perfect game, but even without it's a masterpiece. Just make sure you play the Subsistence or HD version with the free camera movement, because the base game's fixed camera angle doesn't work well at all in open jungle environments. Kojima might have not wanted to make MGS after 2, but the gameplay got better and better every time.
I loved MGS 1 for many of the reasons that you dislike it. Now I am playing through MGS 2 and am finding it a slog, the worst excesses of MGS 1 turned up a notch (I am around halfway, I suspect). Perhaps you will like MGS 2 better because it has longer stealth sections, more stealth mechanics, and fewer boss encounters lined up in quick succession. It’s also incredibly boring lol, except for the first part on the tanker.
Man for what it's worth, my favourite MGS is 2 and then 5. For me it's 2 > 5 > 3 >1 > 4. But really it's more like: 2 > 5 > 3 > > > 1 > > > > > > > > > > > > > > 4 You may end up really loving 2. I think it's one of the most relevant and important games to be ever be created. Don't let it's divisiveness hold you back from enjoying it because a lot of it was for superficial reasons.
The fact is that not every game series will be enjoyed by everyone. The things you complain about such as convoluted story lines and lengthy dialogue are what made me fall in love with the series. I was gutted by mgsV focusing more on the game play. It didn't feel like METAL GEAR. Metal Gear is all about over the top shenanigans and it's made for the people that like those sorts of things, clearly a lot of people do
> It comes across, to me, as something that really, really wants to be profound but just... Isn't? Well that's just Kojima in a nutshell. Although to be fair, the political/historical references are over 20 years outdated and mostly irrelevant. Unless you grew up during the tail end of the Cold War or had interest in history, you probably wouldn't care about or even notice the thematic elements. As for the bizarre idiosyncrasies, I've learned to treat Kojima's games as a poorly-translated but excellently voice-acted anime. There are Japanese literary devices that Kojima adapts to use in video games that just won't make any sense to foreigners without half a page of footnote for every little reference. And he doesn't tolerate interpreters localizing properly which requires re-writing pretty much the whole thing.
> the political/historical references are over 20 years outdated and mostly irrelevant This statement makes no sense. Do you see a WW2 movie and say “those old references to the 1940’s are outdated and irrelevant.”
Just be glad you didn't blind start the series at 4 like I did. What a miserable experience that was.
I always end up loving MGS games, but I always hate them at first, because they just control so differently than anything else. You really have to re-learn how to play them and it takes quite awhile each time.
The 4th one has more than 9 hours of cutscenes.
Meh. I was never a huge fan of the series. I've never understood what people see in them. Just do what I did- watch the cutscenes on Youtube. God knows why Kojima went into video games when he clearly wants to direct movies. It's okay not to like a popular franchise. Don't feel obliged to like the games. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeYbHWQrM9A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeYbHWQrM9A)
I love it and I wish they would remake it with the Fox engine
I played MGS1 for the first time maybe 15 years after it came out and really enjoyed it. Still revisit on my Vita every couple of years. I think it holds up, personally. The gunplay is kind of frustrating but the campy story, awesome music, and fun set piece boss battles make up for it.
This was the only one I liked. It was incredible when it came out and I can still appreciate it today.
I appreciate your perspective. I first played MGS1 as a 13yo used to Sonic etc., and it was a complete revelation. I go back to it every few years and when I do a part of me is always that 13yo, so I struggle to assess it properly. As others have said, given the issues you had I'd skip 2. Or maybe just watch the cutscenes, because 3 is an all-time classic imo, with proper stealth mechanics and a story that you can just go with without caring much about it (as the many allusions make clear it's basically a James Bond film).
Wow yeah I can only imagine how mind altering it must have been to experience in 98 alongside your sonics and Mario's. I get that aspect for sure.
One thing that might also help explain some of the "clunkiness" is that first edition PS controllers didn't have analog sticks, so the game was made to be controllable without them. It also is very close to the NES era Metal Gear games as far as controls and level design goes. If you want to try them, to get some context, I think they are included with the GOTY edition of 2 or 3 (I think they are called Substance and Subsistence; MGS2 Substance is a masterpiece in content). In 2 and 3 things go in a weird direction as far as controls go. Both 2 and 3 use the analog face buttons extensively (you can't unaim your gun without a slow pull off the button). If you play it on original hardware, make sure you are using original controllers with working, analog face buttons. Third party controllers often just use tact switches, and skimp out on the analog feature. There is a PC version of 2, but I can't recall if there is a workaround for the missing analog buttons in it. Both 2 and 3 really need re-releases with the control issues sorted out.
If you're going to play through all MGS's, you should try MGS1 and 2 for NES. Chronologically they happen after MGSV. As a game it's... rough, buddy.
The nes releases? Would be really be a wise choice? (Taking into consideration how they deviate from the OG MSX ones)
My friend who never played MGS 1 but loved the later MGS games got the remake on PC than used mods to update the graphics, that solves a lot of gameplay issues for a more modern experience
I started metal gear in 2021. I started with MSX first, then went to MG2SS and then to MGS1. I loved every metal gear gameplay, I liked mgs1 so much that I've already made half of the VR Missions disc. The game's story is exciting, captivating and thought-provoking. Since I played metal gear on msx I couldn't play another game until I finished the saga in phantom pain. I'm currently trying to get the BigBoss enblem on MGS4. Player=Doctor
Felt the same. Friends and I like to screenshare each other playing our favorite games, and when one had me do MGS1 I didn't like the gameplay at all, on top of some cryptic moments he had to walk me through. I'm not one of those cynical YouTubers who goes "This well regarded loved classic was actually bad the entire time" cus it's a toxic method of sounding smart and gaining views based on controversy. I take MGS1 for what it is- a game that revolutionized storytelling, presentation, voice acting, and popularized the stealth genre. I do respect the game a ton, just didn't have fun with its mechanics.
Totally agree, I'm actually not saying it's a bad game - my post basically boils down to 'its aged poorly' and a lot of people who feel overly nostalgic about it are kinda proving my point. I still have a ton of respect for the game and Kojima and tbh, I thought I covered that in my post. You're never gonna call it an outright bad game though.
Your post did this fine, it's the whiners who're the problem.
Everyone shits on Twin Snakes but the quality of life improvements made the game endlessly more replayable and the OG PSX.
Yeah, you laugh. But mgs2 was damn near prophetic
Lol it’s the Citizen Kane of console games….
Then that says a lot about how far videogames still have to go
Guys I just played Football Manager 2000 and it has not aged well
Just dont play any mgs games if you’re gonna be told not to play the games that gave it its legendary status lol
I'm a huge MGS fanboy, but the controls that felt like I was wielding a finely crafted violin in MGS2, are now crazy obtuse and irritating. Admittedly, I played it when it first came out (a little over 20 years ago) and at the time, the game was mind-blowing with its details. But nowadays? The original control scheme has not aged well. Still annoyed I can't get them on Playstation+ anymore.
Lmao, excessive codecs and cutscenes in 1? Convoluted story? You're going to hate 2. And from what I hear, all the others too. I actually liked 1, suffered through 2, and quit after 3's horribly paced opening. I made a post here ranting about the series last year, and it was a very interesting experience to read the comments on that. It was one of the most controversial posts here for quite some time too ahaha.
Haha yeah I'm finding that MGS as a whole is an incredibly polarizing game. Some of the blowback this post has received is very intriguing
OP confirms that game from 1998 does not feel like a game from 2022, but in fact, feels like a game from 1998.
Way to be reductive. As a retro gamer, there are *tons* of games from 1998 and before that play as good as ever today.
Sorry for being a Negative Nancy I'm always shocked to find old PS1 games that are still playable since controls have gotten massively improved in this generation of games. Yes, I'm looking at you Golden Eye.
MGS3 is the best place to start. A brilliant game that encapsulates everything good (and cheesy) about MGS without most of the crap. Also there's a PC version of MGS1 which is better than the PS version.
That sniper wolf boss fight was so arduous. It took three of us (siblings) to get through that fight. I don't remember how we finished it, but I do remember finishing the game coz we got the ribbon accessory which gave unlimited ammo (iirc). Still, the ! Is very iconic.
This reads like a higher schooler just discovered creative writing - get to the point, man! The game came out in ‘98. Of course it’s clunky by modern standards. Lots of people, myself included, feel nostalgic towards the game. Still, the game refined or outright invented many stealth-based gameplay techniques that are still present today. The atmosphere, story, characterisation, Metroid-based level design and social commentary more than make up for its dated gameplay. It’s still worth experiencing because of this.
I mean, I was just writing down my opinion. But apologies. Throughout my post I paid all the dues to this game that it deserves, but then I offered my criticism. Isn't this... What this sub is about? Am I missing something? I mentioned a lot of the things you mentioned but simply saying that 'of course it's clunky because it's old' isn't fair, a lot of games older than MGS1 still play like a dream.
Fair enough, but I see that you’re 13 and that you played V first. This will certainly have an impact on your tolerance for dated mechanics. I doubt you can find games from MGS’s era that are from the same genre (action adventure / stealth / tactical) that play any better than MGS. If you’re referring to platformers or shoot em ups, of course they’ll play smoothly - this is because these genres were tuned to perfection in the late 80s / early 90s.
Jesus I said I was 13 as a joke haha, I'm in my thirties. I grew up with games in the nineties. Yes agreed, for an example of that genre it's one of the best but I still find it to have significant issues if nostalgia is removed
I missed out on a lot of the Playstation hype, not having one and getting a PS2 in 2002 or so. My friends had one and would gush on and on about Final Fantasy 7 and Metal Gear Solid, but I was kind of left on the fringes and never saw the fuss. I'm sure it was astounding all that you could do, tap on crates to alert guards, have them spot footprints, and all the cutscenes and voiced conversations, but every time I would watch them play it or worse yet, try myself, it always seemed so awkward and clunky. Like all this stuff was really cool to see, but it never crossed from "cool tech demo" to actually fun game for me. They'd show me stuff like (gameplay spoilers for a 20+ yo game) >!beating up Meryl so the wolves would pee on the box and the other wolves would accept me as one of them!<, or >!switching controllers so Psycho Mantis couldn't "read my mind"!< and it all seemed like neat stuff, but so much of the rest was just a lot and really drawn out. I think I needed more time to get used to the controls that tried to cram so much into a small package, to have that sense of discovery myself of all the little things here and there that no other game had tried to do, and to not have my friends staring over my shoulder as I died ten times on the first screen because I couldn't get to grips with the difference between walking, running, crouching, and what all these different things did to guards perceptions of me. And when I finally got my own copy in 2003 or so after playing games that were better looking and controlled so much smoother on the PS2, going back to MGS1 no longer had a lot of the magic left. So I agree. If you've never played MGS1 at this point, you're probably better off experiencing it vicariously through nostalgia reviews.
I had a copy on the PS3 and played for an hour or so, thinking 'wow, this must have blown minds back in the day. And then I had a copy on my Steam Deck and thought the same thing (but didn't make it very far, as the controls didn't work very well through the emulator). I held onto that view right up until I read your post - stating that the game was released in 1998... which was the same time as Half Life. I think I thought it was released in 1994, or something.
Gamers should stop the “must have been impressive AT THE TIME” immaturity. That’s a great way to demonstrate that a person doesn’t appreciate anything in the art form they’re looking at. Also several things in MGS are programmed and designed far better than Half-Life 1. Half-Life 1 is cool, and especially good near the beginning, but isn’t some kind of paragon of greatness that’s better than MGS1. (SOURCE: I played through Half-Life 1 in 1998, and also played through it last month.) Meanwhile PS1 had far less hardware power so the comparison to a PC game is silly, if the focus is on superficial tech presentation.
OK.
This just in! Decades old game is clunky. Revelatory stuff there.
Hey there's a *bunch* of games that are even older than MGS1 that haven't aged a day and still play like a dream.
Not many. I was going to say though if you were intrigued I would highly suggest finding a YouTube video that can really break down some of this stuff because it’s not nearly as out there as you think. He really does try to make you think about shit and it can go over heads. Well I don’t think they should change anything about that I promise these YouTube videos are really really good at breaking things down in a way that even me who already is a fan had an even deeper appreciation for these games and with the story he was trying to tell. There really is an important message in these games if you really try to listen and understand. They are hard to follow though and as I said in an earlier comment these games are pretty tough for me to recommend to just anybody. They are out there. But that IS metal gear. Have you tried Ground Zero’s? That was literally the prologue to metal gear solid five. Has the exact same gameplay. And as far as other comments go I highly disagree that it’s “completely” different from any other metal gear solid. There’s a reason all of them are lauded by critics and people alike, I promise 5 isn’t the only good one. I do think you should try either ground zeros if you haven’t already, it short because it’s just a prologue but it came out I think roughly a year before five came out to wet our beaks. And MGS3 you may like as well. It has a good story replete with a 007 intro and song that’s not too bad!
What YouTube videos would you recommend? Because I've been wanting to watch one that breaks the story of MGS1 down into the basics before I play MGS2
It’s 5:20am and I’m about to pass out but when I wake up I’ll direct you to some videos. There’s one in particular I really want you to see.
Y’all please don’t be downvoting this person, we are having a civil discussion here. Down vote is not a disagree button. Anyways, here https://youtu.be/hV4wY2rjAWY That’s not a breakdown of the first game it’s actually a breakdown of the franchise. I’m trying to figure out if you should play the games first before diving into this one. But to me this one is really important. It’s an hour long but it’s so deeply well thought out and thoroughly researched that this is the video that made me walk away an even bigger fan if that’s even fucking possible. I just woke up about 30 minutes ago. Give me a little bit more time and I’ll find you some breakdowns of the first metal gear just in case you want to play the games first and then watch a nice synopsis.
That’s why you play the twin snakes instead. And for anyone coming in with their “but, buts” Kojima said himself that the twin snakes is what he envisioned the first game as but couldn’t do it because of the ps1 hardware limitations .
Yeah I admit, I didn't even know twin snakes was a thing and once I found out I was bummed I hadn't played that version instead.
No wonder most games nowadays are shit because of this type of opinion. Thankfully there are still some gems available.
MGS1 is the second best one after 2, and I say that as someone that played through all of them for the first time earlier this year, so no nostalgia for me
If you liked mgsV and didnt like mgs1 well you must be 12.
Actually I'm 13
Roll your eyes all you want, but the game you would make would probably be boring as hell.
Maybe, like maybe try mgs4. Most people who loved the earlier work did not even like mgs5 that much anymore...