Board 8 > What are your thoughts on the Metal Gear Solid series?

(+) Yeah! (+)

ExThaNemesis posted...

MGSV ties everything together at last. You finally see who was working with who the whole time and I for one like the whole Venom thing, especially when you delve into Peace Walker and such.

I don't really care for the Venom thing that much personally, and the cutscenes are not very interesting lacking a lot of the flair of previous games, also with MGSV it's more of a gameplay perspective for me too since I don't really like the mission structure of the game at all.

---

Venom is a necessary evil to fill the hole of the original metal gears so I'm okay with it.

---

Brilliant games almost without exception, though all of them are flawed in different ways - some more than others
---

FFDragon posted...

Venom is a necessary evil to fill the hole of the original metal gears so I'm okay with it.

Was "how did Big Boss survive MG1" actually weighing on you before V, though?
---

I can't say it was but I like that there's an explanation for it
---

Yeah V is an answer to a question that shouldn't have and didn't need to be asked

---

it also brought back a bad plot point from MGS4 that didn't need to be brought back and was even more poorly used this time!

---

I will say that this series satisfied me and I don't really need another game from it, but I do feel as though they could stand to update original Metal Gear 1 and 2. Those games stick out like a sore thumb.
---

Nothing is flawless, but MGS comes incredibly close. I replayed 1-4 within the past year and I loved them all. MGS3 is a solid contender for greatest game ever made tbh.

I really didn't like Peace Walker, which I played for the first time earlier this year.

I've begun MGSV and have considered making a topic about it. I'm enjoying it a lot so far.

---

Instead of MGSV I would've liked a Remake of the original Metal Gear games.

---

3 > 1 > 2 > 4 > 5

---

Probably my favorite video game series alongside Final Fantasy and the FromSoftware games starting from Demon's Souls.

MGS1 is still my favorite in the series because of how infinitely replayable it is. The characters and story are still the best and the boss battles are also the best. Gameplay is good for its time and something that I still enjoy (I really don't like the Twin Snakes adaptation). Not to mention this along with FF7 are the two games to have the most impact on me gaming-wise.

UltimaterializerX posted...

2 > 4 > 5 >= 3 > > > > > 1

Your gaming opinions absolutely suck dude.

KamikazePotato posted...

Yeah V is an answer to a question that shouldn't have and didn't need to be asked

Agreed. I can't think any of positives to take away from V's plot, but the retcon at the end of the game is easily its worst transgression for me.

Like, even if MG1's ending was somehow a plot point you couldn't get past (but you somehow made it through like 6 more games in the canonical series afteward?), literally the second game has a way more egregious problem with Big Boss' corpse being charred to a crisp right in front of your eyes once MGS4 comes out, and that's not even mentioning what happens with Gray Fox in MG2 to then MGS (by which I mean, if you accepted that, there's no reason not to accept the orginal ending to MG1).

And I won't get into the Dr. Madnar reference in MGS4 either since it's almost a throw away line to a minor plot point, but all of this is to say the plot has far bigger problems than Big Boss being around for MG2.

It still wouldn't have been good or made sense, but if you were going to switch out a Big Boss, it probably should have been the one that turned into a pile of ash imo.

I wish I liked Phantom Pain's gameplay more, but somewhat like what Leon said, it wears out its weclome at a certain point. The level design, if you could even call it that, is really uninteresting, and the gameplay loop devolves into doing the same things over and over to collect soldiers and way more resources that you don't need and eventually serve no real purpose.

That loop might work better in like a mobile game or MMO or something where new content comes out to justify the grind, but here it gets very repetitive and without enough of a reward beyond a certain point.

On the bright side, it easily controls the best, and for better or worse has the most unrealized potential of the series. It's still a fun game, but I think it would have been better off if it had nothing to do with the Metal Gear franchise.

ExThaNemesis posted...

I think MGSV has the best gameplay in the series by leaps and bounds.

Why does everyone always say this like it's convincing. It's the ONLY thing V has going for it, and plenty of other games have better open world gameplay, so of course it's not as classic as the numbered series.

MGS is all about being more than the sum of its parts and V is way less.

---

Also 2 and 3 blow V's gameplay out of the water, each for different reasons. 4 also controls nearly as well AND has all the other nice MGS stuff.

---

Also we're in 2021 still calling MGSV 5?

---

It's been a while since I played any of them, but I love them, even notwithstanding some of their problems that have been discussed. Actually haven't gotten around to V yet, but I don't like what I've read about it.

Revengeance is unironically a better game than V.

Thats not a controversial take, right?

---

Revengeance is better than half the main series.

---

Revengeance is better than the entire main series.

Revengeance is good, but it really isn't my sort of game. It feels like it's making fun of MGS, in a way.

---

Revengeance is the Galaxy Quest of Metal Gear.

---

SSBM_Guy posted...

Revengeance is good, but it really isn't my sort of game. It feels like it's making fun of MGS, in a way.

That's what I thought 30 minutes in but you quickly realize it's really genuine MGS with the amount of care and detail they put into the charm. The codec is the best since 3 for example. And really, MGS plays like a parody of itself, so that thought is very authentic.

---

Rising feels like it completely embraces MGS's brand of unique insanity. It's far more tonally consistent with the rest of the series than 5 is.

---

1-3 are great

4 is just glorified fan service

5 is....odd but ok.

---

I played MGS3 and ya know, it wasn't TOO bad dealing with it's weird bullshit

---

Best game series. Kojima is a genius.

---

ExThaNemesis posted...

I suspect the menus would probably bother me more today than they used to.

I replayed MGS3 twice earlier this year (perhaps I begun the first one late 2020) and they didn't bother me a single bit.

---

Its a good series that hasnt aged incredibly well, and I suspect that the reason for a perceived decline to some is down to why you are drawn to the series.

The thing is, MGS does not have a very good story and never really has. This is not to say that it is without merit, Ill get to that. Back in the day MGS was really the only option for console games that werent RPGs that told serious stories and it did so in a then revolutionary cinematic style. In high-budget games today this is commonplace. You also have smaller games and games that were previously not on console telling great stories more readily available than ever before. I dont think its a coincidence that the last MGS game with an uncontroversially great story released as long ago as 2004, before Phoenix Wright and Telltale brought back Adventure games, before Naughty Dog popularised the cinematic AAA approach, before Braid and the indie boom, before Bioshock and the rise of sims with socially focused stories, etc. There has been a major change in the quality of story-driven games widely available. This made MGS less relevant overall.

I dont want to be too harsh because MGS really popularised the idea of using games to tell politicsl stories. Thanks for teaching my 9 year old self about nuclear disarmament then! It also makes the existence of a right wing no politics in games group that plays MGS, thinking of one particular user on B8 here, hilarious as this series is antithetical to everything they believe. Especially from Peace Walker on when the message becomes explicitly socialist.

Where the series, and Kojima, really shines is gameplay innovation. So many details and so much variety of play. This is even seen in Death Stranding which has one of the worst stories Ive ever seen in a story-driven AAA game, but has some very interesting gameplay. This is what makes MGSV great despite its flaws, it has a level of interaction with an open world passed by only Breath of the Wild and Red Dead Redemption 2, and those are the very top pf the genre. It did not quite get there and is a structural mess, but it is owed a lot because it may have enabled those two games.

---

Lightning Strikes posted...

It also makes the existence of a right wing no politics in games group that plays MGS, thinking of one particular user on B8 here, hilarious as this series is antithetical to everything they believe. Especially from Peace Walker on when the message becomes explicitly socialist.

Unlike Leftists, I find it possible to enjoy art that may be divergent from my own political beliefs. Life is not very enjoyable if you view everything through such a narrow lens.

Dang dude have some self respect, he wasn't talking about you

---

foolm0r0n posted...

Dang dude have some self respect, he wasn't talking about you

I assumed he was talking about Vlado, whom I must defend whenever his honor is in question.

ChainLTTP posted...

Unlike Leftists, I find it possible to enjoy art that may be divergent from my own political beliefs. Life is not very enjoyable if you view everything through such a narrow lens.

I mean, its one thing to enjoy art that expresses beliefs contrary to your own. Its another thing entirely to be militantly opposed to politics in games while constantly singing praises for one of the most, if not the most, political game series in existence (which also expresses politics radically opposed to your own).

---

Lightning Strikes posted...

I dont think its a coincidence that the last MGS game with an uncontroversially great story released as long ago as 2004, before Phoenix Wright and Telltale brought back Adventure games, before Naughty Dog popularised the cinematic AAA approach, before Braid and the indie boom

Actually I think that's exactly what it was

People who are into video games aren't incapable of seeing good vs bad storytelling in the medium because they're grading it all on a curve. That's not how it works.

I think what's not a coincidence is your age and what it was in 2004 vs earlier years, not game release dates. There's a big difference between thinking MGS games have a good story and something like Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy IX. A younger person might think those and other simpler RPG plots had pretty great stories (Chrono Trigger to its credit is paced very well) as young pre or early teen, but had those games come out when they'd read more books, seen more movies, were just looking at it with a more sophisticated eye in general, they wouldn't think twice.

More games got good stories since then but the old ones didn't get worse. You were just too young to know the difference between passable and good stories in older games.

---

Older games had simpler stories due to the constraints of the medium. I dont think thats the same thing as saying (in all cases) that they were lesser, regardless of your age or experience.

---

redrocket posted...

I mean, its one thing to enjoy art that expresses beliefs contrary to your own. Its another thing entirely to be militantly opposed to politics in games while constantly singing praises for one of the most, if not the most, political game series in existence (which also expresses politics radically opposed to your own).

I think there is a difference between injecting politics into what should be apolitical games/stories and creating a game that centers around politics. That's like saying the West Wing is "too political" of a show.

redrocket posted...

Older games had simpler stories due to the constraints of the medium

Unless we're talking NES era stuff I think that's a cop out

Even a game as early as Final Fantasy IV has all the depth and time needed to tell a great story, it just... doesn't. It doesn't use its pieces in the right way.

I'm not saying Final Fantasy IV has a terrible story but I mean, as a kid we totally could have thought it and MGS had great stories-- seen from the eyes of a 20 year old vs a 10 year old one is a lot closer to being true than the other.

---

2 is the best one, 1 is a close 2nd. 3 was good although i love the people who bitched about Raiden in 2 ("i wanted to play as snake durr!") then snake's not even in 3 at all.

4 was ultimately just flawed as hell. Clearly the worst of the main story.

As of now, as much guff as this will get, I'm tired of big boss stories. We didn't need most of these games. Maybe 1 or 2. MGS3 was a great story of big boss's feeling of betrayed by his country, his respect for the boss, etc. Maybe a follow up to that with portable ops was needed too, but not much else. MGS5 lol

---

You do play as Snake in MGS3 though...!

---

I played the DLC stories for Revengeance over the weekend, and I was impressed with how they were able to feel different from the main game. Jetstream Sam's level requires you to make use of his taunt to lower his enemies' guard, but this also makes the enemies stronger and more aggressive, so you need to have your blocking and dodging on point. Meanwhile, Blade Wolf makes more use of the stealth mechanic, which is relatively underused in the main game.

I think the difference between Metal Gear Solid and political content in other games is that Metal Gear Solid takes a more thematic approach, as opposed to commenting on or reacting to specific contemporary US politics at the time of the game's release. This gives it a more timeless feel than, say, Mortal Kombat 11 referencing Donald Trump, which immediately dates that game to the late 2010's.

Leonhart4 posted...

You do play as Snake in MGS3 though...!

Yeah that's a weird post because it glosses over why people wanted to play as Snake

Because MGS3 Snake is better than MGS1 Snake, tbh

Just ended up looking at MGS3 memes and was reminded of how hilarious the torture scene is in that game

what a fucking series
---

Big Boss basically becoming the main character of the series from 3 onward is why I stopped liking it as much. Snake and Raiden and Otacon got pretty much sidelined. MGS5 is the culmination of my worst fears for the series and it all started with 3.

---

KamikazePotato posted...

Snake and Raiden and Otacon got pretty much sidelined.

Snake and Otacon's stories ended with MGS4. I think it would've done a disservice to bring Snake back especially.

And then Raiden got REVENGEANCE anyway.

---

MGS4 basically existed to sideline them! Their overarching storylines really could have used another game of breathing room. Kojima openly stated that he preferred writing Big Boss by a lot. You can especially see it in the ending, which is all about Big Boss and Zero. I think it's fairly obvious he rushed to complete the 'main' storyline in one game so he could go off and make Big Boss games, which is exactly what he did.

REVENGEANCE is great though.

---

Right, but I don't think Snake's storyline was the problem with MGS4. I think he got a good sendoff for the most part. It could've been better, I admit, but Act 5 Snake is pretty amazing.

---

Old Snake is my favorite character rendition of anyone in the series, but I really would've liked one more game with him in a central role. The jump between MGS2 Snake and Old Snake is too drastic I think.

With that said, MGS4 is still a great conclusion. I just feel like there's a chapter missing in the story.

---