Board 8 > Rate the VG Story Day 7 - Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty

(+) Yeah! (+)

Todays game is Metal Gear Solid 2. How would you rate the story on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest?
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Previous Results:
Disco Elysium - 8.58 (12 votes)
Final Fantasy X - 8.3 (43 votes)
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - 8.09 (31 votes)
Chrono Cross - 6.77 (11 votes)
Uncharted: Drakes Fortune - 5.43 (21 votes)
Fallout 4 - 4.45 (10 votes)

You can still rate previous days games if you missed them, just write <game name> <rating>. If you want to change your rating you can just specify that you are changing your rating. Nominations for future days are also welcome.


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8

Some pretty good stuff, some weaker stuff. Not as great as 1 or 3.
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6.5/10

Starts out reasonably good, but most of the back end of the game is a mix of good ideas with poor execution or just straight bad ideas. Definitely the weakest of the stories from the MGS games I played. (1-4 and Peace Walker)

...when I put it like that my rating feels too high, but at the same time the story is definitely serviceable. Most of the playtime in the game is during the portion of the story I actually enjoy, and it does quite a good job establishing intrigue. And even during the parts of the story I don't really care for the sense of tension is able to maintain my engagement.
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8/10

I think the depth and complexity of the story is overstated, but I still enjoy the overall plot and the twists. However, I do wish he had done much less of the exposition via 30 minute Codec.

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7/10

Hideo Kojima's stories are always really mixed - sometimes he does amazingly creative things that make great use of gaming as a medium, but usually he just sits you down and lectures you with nonstop expository dialog. His games are full of tonally-inappropriate comedy, overly convoluted nonsense, and stilted character actions, but still somehow manage to have some of the most emotional and thought-provoking content in the medium. MGS2 has the highest highs and the lowest lows. Raiden running around naked while the computer tells him to turn the game off is disconcerting and memorable as Hell, but it's also probably the most nonsensical of all four games by the end.

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5

The translation really kills it for me compared to MGS1, which is why none of the subsequent games really have great stories (yes, even MGS3).

nom Undertale

Chrono Cross - 7
MGS2 - 9.5

Peak Kojima best Kojima.

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9/10

Has one of the best bait-and-switch openings in all of gaming. Raiden is a perfect protagonist; in the game's crazy plot that mixes psychological thriller with political meanderings, anime-tier insane antagonists, and ever increasing levels of meta meddling, Raiden feels like the only one not in on the joke as he idiotically stumbles from one plot point to the next while somehow being the most central character to it all. The game is prescient and relevant, overwritten yes, but that's also part of its charm. It revels in being a Hollywood blockbuster, a goofy video game with 4th wall breaks everywhere, and a genuinely engaging philosophical work of art, and to pull off all three at the same time and have it work and be memorable and quotable is a genuine achievement of interactive storytelling.


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Sometimes I am convinced Snake and I are the same person.

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FFDragon posted...

Sometimes I am convinced Snake and I are the same person.

You have often kept me waiting

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10

Aged brilliantly and changed the way I play videogames. I'm not interested in picking holes here, I fucking love basically every minute of this.
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I haven't played it in some fifteen years but the experience I remember is easily a 10. Might be the first game that got me to think about what video game stories could be.

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10

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First time it blew my mind, second time not so much, but it's still very good.

8

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8/10

I think it's very good; the clunker ideas are balanced out with some brilliant scenes.

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After a lot of deliberation between a 6 or a 7 (or splitting the difference and going for a 6.5) I will give Metal Gear Solid 2 a:

7

I do quite like this story, and think that it is one of Kojimas better ones. The strength of its themes has been much discussed. It does, however, have some significant flaws, worst of all the fact that 9/11 led to a large part of the ending sequence getting dropped at the very last minute which resulted in it feeling disjointed and like a solid wall of exposition. Also, the success of this game (this is both the best reviewed and the highest selling MGS game) may have been bad for the series story and Kojimas writing as a whole? It is likely what led to MGS4 being the way it is, and that is getting a 1 or a 2 from me when it is rated. Ultimately I decided against factoring it in but I do resent this story slightly for leading to MGS4s dreadful story.

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11

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10, peak of MGS.

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9.5

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9
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8

It has its ups and downs, and there is the usual 'up its own ass' MGS nonsense scattered around, but it's probably the most interesting story in the series for me (I haven't played every entry tbf). Structurally it's very ambitious, and there's some legitimately terrific plot beats. I love the codec stuff personally! 3 may have more massive setpieces but 2 is telling its (imo better) narrative in a much less typical way, and I have to credit it for that.


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8

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Ill bump this now.

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10

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9

Great. Just Not as good as 1, 3 and 4.

10

Best Kojima game of all time

Up this topic goes.

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