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| Genjuro 563th Post
 
New Red Carpet Member
 
    
    
|  "Thoughts on MGS2"
, posted Mon 25 Aug 01:01:
Well,I finally got a PS2 about a month ago and I had the time to start and finish MGS2 this weekend..
Up until the end,I was thinking:the game is a technical achievement(even if I'm playing it a little late) but the story,the progression,the enemies,the dialogue..wtf?
The turnarounds in the case made some sense but it was getting ridiculous..In some dialogues you could see the irony of a videogame not just not taking itself too seriously like MGS but going even further..I couldn't help but thinkng of H.Kojima with an evil laugh..
When the ending came and you had Ocelot/Liquid on one side and Solidus,Solid Snake,Fortune and Raiden on the other I thought to myself that Kojima has made a fool out of me-and I love it
You see,I've seen many people critisizing MGS2 on the grounds that it's trying to be "literary" or whatever.That is not what Kojima had in mind.One should not judge MGS2 on its story.It is not meant to-just like Evangelion :P
In short,I can say that MGS2 is for videogames what "The Game" was for movies.Kind of.It was a very bold thing for Kojima to do that and by doing it it also shook off the angst of trying to be "the anticipated sequel to MGS".
Any comments?
Sorry for the long post
[this message was edited by Genjuro on Mon 25 Aug 01:04] |
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| OYashiroForever 448th Post
Gold Customer
| "Re(1):Thoughts on MGS2" , posted Mon 25 Aug 20:10
quote:
Well,I finally got a PS2 about a month ago and I had the time to start and finish MGS2 this weekend..
Up until the end,I was thinking:the game is a technical achievement(even if I'm playing it a little late) but the story,the progression,the enemies,the dialogue..wtf?
The turnarounds in the case made some sense but it was getting ridiculous..In some dialogues you could see the irony of a videogame not just not taking itself too seriously like MGS but going even further..I couldn't help but thinkng of H.Kojima with an evil laugh..
When the ending came and you had Ocelot/Liquid on one side and Solidus,Solid Snake,Fortune and Raiden on the other I thought to myself that Kojima has made a fool out of me-and I love it
You see,I've seen many people critisizing MGS2 on the grounds that it's trying to be "literary" or whatever.That is not what Kojima had in mind.One should not judge MGS2 on its story.It is not meant to-just like Evangelion :P
In short,I can say that MGS2 is for videogames what "The Game" was for movies.Kind of.It was a very bold thing for Kojima to do that and by doing it it also shook off the angst of trying to be "the anticipated sequel to MGS".
Any comments?
Sorry for the long post
I am definitely of the mind that MGS2's final hour plus was the gaming community collectively taking a shot in the mouth from Kojima. While MGS1 was intelligent, insanely well-made, and a little over-the-top, MGS2 is the Evangelion of gaming: starts out incredibly promising (everything up to Otacon's "revelation" was fine by me)and turns in to a garbled mess filled with irritating characters, elementary level philosophy, and the most heinously stupid plot twists ever.
I've had friends attempt to defend the game's final couple of hours to me before and it all ends up like "Kojima was trying something different" or he was "making a bold attempt at broadening the horizons of what to expect from a game's story". Sounds exactly like what Eva apologists try to say. Not buying it...
Really, it's almost a shame the game looks so good and plays so damn well. I've played through it several times because, for its time, it's a great technical and cinematic achievement. Got almost all of the dog tags too... in the end, I still consider it a great game. However, that doesn't change the fact that the final few story sequences are laughably bad (although some of those Colonel lines during the streaking scene are pretty damn funny in the traditional "ha-ha" sense of the word).
"Only two things are infinite the universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the former."
"Your denial is beneath you and thanks to the use of hallucinogenic drugs I see through you."
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| CrazyMike 640th Post
Red Carpet Regular Member
| "Re(4):Thoughts on MGS2" , posted Mon 25 Aug 21:31
About the plot, here is some things that did not make sense, or were stupidly thrown in.
Vamp: Okay, psycho mantis was one thing, but a honest, true vampire? Thats a little too fictitious for me. And what was up with his homosexual relationship with the general? There was NO explanation about that, and it added nothing to the story and just ended up being weird (and how would somebody like vamp get to know him in uh, such a way in the first place).
Olga/Ninja: Again, maybe its because I haven't played it in awhile, but where in the hell did she get that ninja suit? And secondly, who would give it to her in the first place? Would you trust that woman with such a expensive piece of equipment?
Solidus: This is the biggest WTF of them all; we got the former PRESIDENT, yes PRESIDENT of the United States running around as a villain in a Dr. Octopus costume. And what happens at the end? Arsenal Gear crashes into the middle of friggin New York City and he falls to his death; now excuse me, wouldn't the people of NYC wonder a little bit about this big fortress showing up at the harbor, and wouldn't they also wonder why their former president is lying dead in a Omega Red suit?
Also, if the "Patriots" really control the country, if not the world; why would the UN be hiring Snake to investigate; wouldn't they have the power to control that as well?
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| Radish 1585th Post
Red Carpet V.I.P- Platinum Member
    
 
| "Re(5):Thoughts on MGS2" , posted Mon 25 Aug 21:42
quote:
About the plot, here is some things that did not make sense, or were stupidly thrown in.
Vamp: Okay, psycho mantis was one thing, but a honest, true vampire? Thats a little too fictitious for me. And what was up with his homosexual relationship with the general? There was NO explanation about that, and it added nothing to the story and just ended up being weird (and how would somebody like vamp get to know him in uh, such a way in the first place).
Olga/Ninja: Again, maybe its because I haven't played it in awhile, but where in the hell did she get that ninja suit? And secondly, who would give it to her in the first place? Would you trust that woman with such a expensive piece of equipment?
Solidus: This is the biggest WTF of them all; we got the former PRESIDENT, yes PRESIDENT of the United States running around as a villain in a Dr. Octopus costume. And what happens at the end? Arsenal Gear crashes into the middle of friggin New York City and he falls to his death; now excuse me, wouldn't the people of NYC wonder a little bit about this big fortress showing up at the harbor, and wouldn't they also wonder why their former president is lying dead in a Omega Red suit?
Also, if the "Patriots" really control the country, if not the world; why would the UN be hiring Snake to investigate; wouldn't they have the power to control that as well?
Remember, if something doesn't make sense either:
a) it's part of the Patriot's needlessly complicated plan to continue controling the world from behind the scenes.
b) it happened in virtual reality.
c) the patriots did it in virtual reality.
d) you were being too grossed out hearing one of the Emerich kin whining about nukes or having sex with inlaws to pay attention to whatever Rose was yammering about.
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| Ammadeau 410th Post
Gold Customer
| "Re(5):Thoughts on MGS2" , posted Mon 25 Aug 21:46:
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"Done better", maybe, depending on what you mean. I know a lot of people who liked Splinter Cell better than the MGS games... I don't. Just because you can do more in Splinter Cell, I don't feel it's necessarily improved. MGS feels more refined to me... less actions, but the gameplay felt tighter. For that reason, I prefer the MG gameplay.
Actually I liked Splinter Cell less than MGS2. The lack of freedom really killed it for me. I was thinking more along the lines of Hitman 2 and Headhunter, actually. Just being able to see what I was shooting at all the time was a huge bonus in my book.
quote Again, maybe its because I haven't played it in awhile, but where in the hell did she get that ninja suit? And secondly, who would give it to her in the first place? Would you trust that woman with such a expensive piece of equipment?
Patriots gave it to her. They trust her because they're holding her child as a hostage. Even though the whole returning ninja thing was lame, it was explained.
[this message was edited by Ammadeau on Mon 25 Aug 21:48] |
| DarkZero
226th Post
Frequent Customer
| "Re(3):Thoughts on MGS2" , posted Mon 25 Aug 22:49
quote So sloppy the programmers probably just reused the code from MGS, which they wrote when they were drunk. Every single other game of this vague type (Splinter Cell, Hitman, etc) does it better.
Hitman had the worst controls of any game that I've ever played outside of Resident Evil 2. If even a couple of the enemies of the game didn't die in one shot like all of the others, the game would've been truly unplayable. Aiming was difficult, moving was clunky, and sneaking required you to use the "analog buttons" component of the PS2 controller, which is the worst innovation in the history of gaming and made both Hitman and MGS2 difficult to play. MGS2, though, was smart, and assigned the analog function to a relatively unimportant task and gave you a wide leeway in how hard you tapped the button. Hitman assigned the analog function to a crucial part of the game and gave you a very small leeway, which kept me from getting the Stealth Assassin rank on any level.
Hopping around to different people's points now:
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the Metal Gears were weak and pathetic (I don’t know how they were planning on world domination if a man held SAM was going to take them out so easily
The Rays were just protection for Arsenal Gear and there were hundreds of them. Asking how the Patriots were going to take over the world with nothing but Rays is like asking how the Empire was going to take over the galaxy with nothing but TIE Fighters... they weren't. The little ships are just there to protect the Big One.
quote Okay, psycho mantis was one thing, but a honest, true vampire? Thats a little too fictitious for me. And what was up with his homosexual relationship with the general? There was NO explanation about that, and it added nothing to the story and just ended up being weird (and how would somebody like vamp get to know him in uh, such a way in the first place).
Oh, come on. Yeah, the homosexual relationship with Fortune's father didn't make a lot of sense, but that conversation between Raiden and Snake was the single funniest part of the game. I was practically on the floor. Snake goes into this whole, long vampire story with burning churches, drinking blood, and all kinds of gothic crap, and then Raiden says, "Oh, so that's why they call him Vamp..."
"No, he's bisexual."
quote Again, maybe its because I haven't played it in awhile, but where in the hell did she get that ninja suit? And secondly, who would give it to her in the first place? Would you trust that woman with such a expensive piece of equipment?
The Cyborg Ninja was created by the US government and they obviously began mass producing them after their initial test was successful. Solidus got one because he was the President of the United States, Olga got one because she was working for the Patriots.
quote:
Also, if the "Patriots" really control the country, if not the world; why would the UN be hiring Snake to investigate; wouldn't they have the power to control that as well?
They needed a scapegoat for the Tanker "accident" and Snake's newfound international fame after the publishing of the Shadow Moses book made him a difficult man to kill or stonewall. Letting him onto the Tanker and then taking pictures of him supposedly sabotaging it killed two birds with one stone.
A lot of the game actually made some sort of sense if you were willing to wade through endless optional codec conversations. Personally, I don't think the Logic Train jumped the tracks until just before the fight with Solidus, but when it did jump the tracks, it practically fell into a canyon. Solidus killing Raiden's parents, Raiden fighting Solidus, people walking around normally in front of Arsenal Gear and a former President's dead body, Rose showing up, the Patriots being immortal aliens or something... it all just went to Hell. The only part of it that made any sense was Snake's abstract explanation of memetics, but even that didn't really fit after Solidus's character was utterly maimed by the last story sequence.
I look forward to MGS3 because I hope that it will excise all of the supernatural bullshit out of the Metal Gear series and turn it back into a well-referenced, interesting sci-fi espionage game. However, I think the series is going to have to go back to MGS2's asinine characters and loose plot threads some day, and I don't think I'm even going to play that game.
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| Grave 594th Post
New Red Carpet Member
| "Re(4):Thoughts on MGS2" , posted Mon 25 Aug 23:51
quote:
Oh, come on. Yeah, the homosexual relationship with Fortune's father didn't make a lot of sense, but that conversation between Raiden and Snake was the single funniest part of the game. I was practically on the floor. Snake goes into this whole, long vampire story with burning churches, drinking blood, and all kinds of gothic crap, and then Raiden says, "Oh, so that's why they call him Vamp..."
"No, he's bisexual."
Hah, yeah, that was great. A lot of my friends missed the part where they go over that on the codec, and telling them about it, they were just as amused as I was when I first heard it in the game. There were tons of little funny things hidden in MGS2, lots of love went into that game... regardless of whether or not you like it, you have to admit that it's a class act and it's a well-constructed game. Well-constructed plot, on the other hand...
quote:
The Cyborg Ninja was created by the US government and they obviously began mass producing them after their initial test was successful. Solidus got one because he was the President of the United States, Olga got one because she was working for the Patriots.
Offtopic but crazy: the real-life DARPA organization is actually trying to develop ability-enhancing exoskeletons for humans. MGS predicting the future, perhaps?
quote:
people walking around normally in front of Arsenal Gear and a former President's dead body
In NYC? I wouldn't be surprised... People will keep walking past a dead body in NYC, but as for Arsenal Gear? Well, after 9/11, I don't think anything will shock New Yorkers anymore, heh... Okay, it's a stretch, but it could happen!
quote:
Rose showing up
I could never figure that girl's deal out.
quote:
I look forward to MGS3 because I hope that it will excise all of the supernatural bullshit out of the Metal Gear series and turn it back into a well-referenced, interesting sci-fi espionage game.
Yeah, I have to admit, I'm VERY interested in seeing how this game goes. Kojima has already stated that the game has no roads or pathways, and this is 100% jungle action. I can't wait... it should be very, very different, and the survival elements sound awesome. This should tell us everything we want to know about the pre-MG/MG2 timeline... hell, when Big Boss enters at the beginning, he appears to have both eyes, yet in some screenshots, he's obviously missing one. I expect to know the story behind that, the story behind the clones, the creation of the first Metal Gear... ahh! I want this game right now.
quote:
However, I think the series is going to have to go back to MGS2's asinine characters and loose plot threads some day, and I don't think I'm even going to play that game.
As much as MGS2's ending made me shake my head, I do want to see an advancement of the current MG plot, or better yet, a conclusion. I was sure MGS2 would be the end of the series when I got it... and... well, when I popped the game in and a little while later I find myself playing as a new character I had never seen before, and continuing to do so until the end of the game... yeah, I was a little confused. Still, I was happy with MGS2 for the most part, but I'm afraid of where the series could be going, in terms of non-prequel games.
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