Be Excellent To Each Other

All the MGS games I've played so far have had slightly clunky controls, though the basics are usually sound (trying to hold people up without accidentally putting your gun away or shooting them in MGS2 was too unreliable to be worth trying, for instance, and don't even bother trying to run and shoot). Except, damninginly, MGS4, which is for the most part easy and reliable to control, even the advanced moves. Another reason to hate it for the wasted opportunity.



Hurrah! Cheers, but a beer is unnecessary. I would accept a couple of pints of milk or some bread, though. Wholemeal, please, or semi-skimmed.

I never had any troubles running and shooting. Hitting anything that wasn't in a direct horizontal or vertical line is a challenge though.

Did you figure out that running and shooting is the only reliable way to hold someone up?

Hold 'em up then hold R1, making you to run around with the gun like a spaz allowing to fire off the shot you've got charged up without killing anyone.

Brilliant stuff! If the whole review-site-thingy that was supposed to accompany this forum ever goes live, Sinister's review needs to be on the front page. Forever.

This is probably the most entertaining thread I've read, anywhere, ever. Thanks, Sinister Agent!

Meanwhile, I have now decided that it is the best game ever.

Why?

I was crawling along, only to be mbushed by a horde of squeaking guinea pigs. It made me so happy.

Ha! I liked them, too. I love the noise real guinea pigs make, and they make it perfectly. Also, if you shoot one with the tranquiliser gun, it falls over and little ZZZ signs come out of its head, just like the guards, but smaller. It then vanishes, sadly, but it's still quite cute and made me giggle rather girlishly.


Just in case it pops up over the weekend and some drama kicks off, I should probably mention that Stu's asked to put the last bit up as a guest review on WoS (I pasted the last bit on the WoS forums). I've told him that it'll likely go up on our site once it's up, but I am personally happy and rather flattered to have it on his as well if he wishes.

Well that's going some serious distance to avoid writing original content isn't it.

Demand a link to here

Riiiiiiight.

Semi-skimmed bread is rubbish.

I had a read of some of that thread last night, presumably because I had a surplus of respect and hope for human life. I feel almost as angry at the gullible idiots on forums like that spreading the idea that it's the BEST THING EVAR simply because they decided it was about five years ago and haven't re-evaluated that stance since as I do at the corrupt reviewers who are supposed to tell the truth. Twats.

I had a quick insta-webo-message with one of my old reviewing chums just the other day -- a perfectly trustworthy, well adjusted gamer, this chap, and he really enjoyed MGS4. And I mean 'really' as in 'genuinely', because he, just like pretty much everyone on planet Earth, doesn't lie about which videogames he enjoys.

I don't know what the point would be in getting mad about that. Patently you can judge pulp according to literary criteria until you're blue in the face, finding it wanting at pretty much every step of the way, and Joe Public will still love it -- probably because Joe Public hasn't fallen into the habit of judging his entertainment solely by how little it offends rather than how much it delights, which is what inevitably happens when you set out to critique as opposed to consume a form.

That's not to say mainstream entertainment should be exempt from highbrow criticism, but it should at least be understood that one can expect little correlation with its popular reception. And if mainstream reviewers, who are supposed to provide buying advice to consumers, are in tune with their readership then, well, what's so very terrible about that?

It's a shit game, though. It tries to be a film, and it's a really crap film, and the bits that aren't a crap film are mostly a crap game, and what good there is nowhere near enough to call a game. I've been considering it not by literary standards, but as entertainment, and I stand by that. The game bits are inconsistent and too few, the film bits are tedious, poorly written and paced, and the story is insultingly flawed. You can't bang on about how it's just like a film and artistically amazing and then turn round and say "but you can't judge it by film or artistic standards", and either way, it fails as a game too, so the point is moot.

It's people calling a game great and saying how you have to get it it's amazing buy a PS3 and wow best game ever when it's just a pile of overhyped, jumped up shit that bothers me*. A lot of people are saying how cinematic it is and how great th story and dialogue and shit is - so I'll judge those things as I would judge them anywere else. And it falls desperately short in every regard except the graphics, which are useless in a crap game.

Seriously, have you read some of the comments in that thread on rllmuk? I've not even an opinion about the place as I've read maybe two threads there ever, but christ. It's a game in which you spent most of your time doing absolutely nothing at all, and when you do get to do something, it's frequently not worth doing. That people are so willingly blinded and happy to lap this shit up and call it ambrosia gets on my nerves. There are thousands of games and films that are better in every regard ('cept graphics, but so what?), yet people are saying this is the best game ever, and worth buying a console for. It's not even the best game on the PS3, and if I'd spent £300+ on the strength of what some of these people have been saying, I would be out for fucking blood after playing this.

*I get pissed off about FIFA games for the same reason, although I would say that every FIFA game I've played was more fun than this.

Edit:



But I didn't set out to critique. I started playing and thought I'd pass on what it was like, and as the days went by I got angrier and angrier and merely expressed what effect trying to play the game for fun was having on me, because if I didn't get it out of my system I fear I'd have torn apart, deep fried and eaten the tv. I don't sit down and watch a film or cut scene looking for flaws. Note how much I tried to convince myself it would get better and the gameplay would shine through and make it worthwhile. That wasn't an attempt at balanced critique; that was rationalising for the sake of my sanity, because I couldn't find any other reason to keep playing.

I sit down with a game to play it, and when it forces me to sit through a stupid cut scene, I'll roll my eyes and move on. When it forces me to sit through ten hours of stupid cut scenes, though, there's nothing else to do but sit there crying out "What the FUCK? Oh for... SHOOT HIM, YOU BUMBLING TWAT. Robo... oh for fuck's sake. What? How did that.... but he's DEAD. He's just magically alive again? And what the hell did she do that for? ghaaah." When the game clearly thinks i'm supposed to be enjoying this, and that this is in fact what they're charging £40 for, I get a little... testy.

You appear to be judging it by the standard that it demands to be judged and everyone else is letting it off the hook.

I could never get into MGS2, simply because when I got to the explosives boss battle I had an epiphany about it. Here is a game being so deadly serious, trying so hard to be deep and meaningful and we've got a fat bloke whizzing around on roller skates. It isn't as if the rest of the serious has had that slightly tongue in cheek aspect, either.

MGS is perfect ammunition for those that say gaming doesn't have the maturity of Hollywood.

If you nag me, eventually, I do it.

We just need Sinister to play through it again and take some screenshots.

Nice work!

Yeah, what gives SinisterAgent? Get it sorted man. Another one, maybe two playthroughs should get it sorted

I could get my 2 year old nephew to draw the screenshots. That would be more entertaining.

Hey, those were typos. I don't have a chair, give me a break.

I like the intro though, cheers!

Completed it just now. Epilogue scene is 1 hour long excluding credits, but I'm going to include them because they're fucking unskippable, so it's about 70 minutes. I watched it over a bowlful of pineapple and tea, tapping observations into my phone.

-----

The final fight refills both your energy bars another time, and randomly makes your attacks go to cut scenes where you do a load of extra karate shit that you can't do outside of cut scenes. By the end of the fight, the fight itself is two-thirds cut scene and you are reduced to one functional button (even the analogue sticks stop doing anything), which you must press to see the next cut scene, or either nothing will happen or you'll die - I'm fucked if I'm playing it through again to find out. Either way, it's Pavlovian obedience all the way.

-----

Epilogue is trite, rambling, haphazard, poorly written and by turns absurd and predictable. One person made a grave, sombre final speech about fourteen times before finally shutting the fuck up and carking it. More characters acted totally idiotically and failed to ask glaring questions like "So, you say you lied to me about having a miscarriage. Why was that, exactly? Only, having my kid and lying about it for no reason, then shacking up with another man and claiming it was to protect me, when a reasonable person would have just NOT FUCKING DONE THAT strikes me as a little ... how should I put this? Cuntish? Ridiculous? Batshit fucking mental? Oh, never mind, I'll just instantly forgive you, and let's also gloss over the fact that my arms have somehow grown back and I'm no longer a robot."

-----

"We have a score to settle!"

"No we don't. I've kicked your arse in every type of combat and foiled your plans like, six times. You've never beaten me at anything, and now that I'm virtually dead you think you can pick a fight and it'll mean anything if you win? I fucking win, Liquid, just face it - you're shite and I'm ace. Get a fucking girlfriend, for god's sake."

-----

"Snake! This is exactly what I wanted!"

"You ... wanted me to foil all your plans? What?"

"I wanted you to foil all my plans! We're free now!"

"What? That makes no fucking sense. If you wanted me to stop you, why did you ... start?"

"Rambling bollocks about freedom! We're shadows and roses and stuff, and because we're sterile we're animals, and war is bad and we want freedom and shadows have lights and shit..."

"Does anyone in this game ever answer a fucking question?"

"Patriots! The patriots did it."

"Wh.. what? That has nothing to do with-"

"Shut up. Let's fight."

"What? Why? You just said you wanted this. If we're both on the same side, why do you want to fight? And why, for that matter, have you spent all this time plotting and trying to kill me? Why not just tell me what's going on, and we'll team up?"

"Shut up! Fighting now! RAAARGH!"

-----

Kojima is listed under the voice credits as "Voice of God". I leave you to draw your own conclusions from this.

-----

Credits list about 20 names under "scripters", which comes before the programming unit, so I believe this to mean the writing. This explains a lot. I can only assume that all these people hated each other and never spoke once throughout, each writing a couple of scenes independently and sending them to Kojima, who threw them together without bothering to read them first.

-----

Finally, it's ende... oh, jesus. Jesus F Christ.

Total play time: 27:40:20

That must have included the pause time while I spoke on the phone for about eight hours. It ... it... oh god, I think I'm going to kill myself.

Total running time, more like.

Total walking down a corridor in ever-increasingly slow motion whilst you pound a single button time more like.

With all due respect though, that's bollocks. This isn't about judging pulp by literary critera, this is about judging the difference between good pulp and bad pulp.

Raiders Of The Lost Ark doesn't tell you much about the human condition, but it's a more fun way of passing a couple of hours of your life than Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull.


Best. Line. Ever.

Haha, I assumed it was a sign of mental collapse. I amended it!

Given the EPIC LENGTH that this review covered when I pasted it altogether, I thought a sense of... occasion... was the least I could do

Quite so, but I do think the propensity of people like *us* (if that's not too vulgar) to approach gaming with a rigorously critical eye can make us... hmm, let's see... unduly truculent? "Best game *evar*!!" is surely an over-excited colloquialism for "Best game[ing experience I have personally] ever [enjoyed]!" -- which we've no reason to assume to be anything other than a perfectly accurate sentiment for a PS3 owner to express (at which point it becomes absurd to lambaste the magazines that cater to this group for catering to this group). Don't let their enjoyment blacken your hearts -- clearly the game is quite capable of that all on its own.

Hahaha this!

I'm all for judging and reviewing things with regards to the way they'll be taken in the real world - if I'm buying a paperback at the airport with a picture of an exploding Jumbo Jet on the front, I don't care about its insight into the nature of ambition and betrayal, or whether it's a scathing expose of the materialism of modern soceity, I care about whether the adventures of Major Dirk Thrust are going to keep me entertained until I reach my hotel at the other end, Other the other hand, it really pees me off when someone says "But it's just a bit of fun! Don't be so harsh on it!" Rubbish. I've paid my cash, I deserve my bit of empty-headed fluff to be well written, with no glaring errors, stupid cliches or lazy plots.

You've got to think that there was a lack of intelligence when putting that book out for sale...

Before this gets silly (well, sillier than airport shops stocking books with exploding planes on the cover, which would actually rule), I'm not saying you can't dislike MGS4. You can dislike whatever you, er, like; Denouncing those who enjoy it as idiots, and reviewers who mark it positively as 'twats', though, as if these people were maliciously enjoying the game specifically to get at you... pfft, no good will come of it I tells ye.

_ \ / -BRILLIAAAAAANT!
/|\_.__|
/ \ _._/ \

_ \ / -LOVE TEH METAL G3AR!
/|\___|
/ \ __/ \

__D
/|___/|\
/ \ __/ \

/___v
/|__._/|\
/ \ _._/ \

/___V
/|__._/|\ \
/ \ _._/ \ _ _

No, wait a minute, that actually looks like fun. I've changed my mind.

I agree with you there, and I am in fact a big fan of Matthew Reilly's utterly ridiculous action books where people blow up submarines with grappling hook bombs and kill fifty SAS guys singlehanded, and beat up sharks and surf on motorbikes, but those are fun and stuff actually happens - indeed, there's never a quiet moment, and the characters are consistent, interesting enough for the medium, and remain true to their motivations. MGS4 though, is just un-entertaining, takes alternately takes itself way too seriously and tries to be 'hilarious', and just comes across as so insulting and in love with itself, lazily written and horribly paced. It's just not fun to watch, and often not fun to play when it gives you permission.

Reviewers - sorry, I'll let the rabid fans go if I must, but the reviewers are pricks. It's their job to be honest and tell people whether a game is any fun, and I've not seen a single review that gave a high score that did anything but gush pretentious propaganda direct from Konami's Marketing Dept. There is no way any decent reviewer could play this even halfway through and think it's a great game and recommend buying it. It's a catalogue of awful design choices, and terrible cinematics. Although I'd be prepared to believe that some of them may have just played the first two 'acts' and assumed the rest of the game was like that.

Agreed, I love "Shriek if you know what I did last Friday 13th" for instance, because it knows exactly what it is, and plays it brilliantly.

But a good piece of literature? Not really. Just because something is "bubblegum", doesn't mean the quality threshold has to, or should be any lower.

Kojima seems to want MGS to be an epic, complex and emotionally-fuelled story of extraordinary events and social/scientific insight, but he has no fucking idea how to write or tell that story.

If he'd written Star Wars, Han Solo would have betrayed everyone for no reason, then died a couple of times and come back to life, and everyone would forgive him and never question why he did it, just because it made it look a bit more dramatic. Then it would turn out that the whole thing had been orchestrated entirely by Yoda, because that too sounds like a big twist if you're a cretin, and makes it seem clever and profound, when it's really just a lazy hack job.

You keep saying that like it's a fact, and as if all the people who claim to have thoroughly enjoyed it are somehow mistaken. Personally I think it sounds pretty bad, like Sons Of Liberty on crack or something, and I'm glad of detailed testimony up-thread -- stick with the people who appreciate you.

Mind you, Snake Eater's story was nonsensically bonkers and that turned out to be ace, so MGS clearly has the potential to transcend its narrative shortcomings. This is surely highly subjective territory, though, which is kinda my point -- the biggest list of objective errors in the world amounts to nothing against different tastes and standards. It's nice, having been into games for so long that your sense of appreciation for the form is refined to the point where you can pick out all these problems, but the price for that is a certain level of disconnect from the mainstream: To illustrate, there are some people who think Doom 3's weapons not having torches attached is a hideous world-breaking oversight, while there are another bunch of people who just get on with enjoying the tension created by an artificial constraint within what is a wholly artificial construct anyway. As is so very often the case with such things, you can be right (because futuristic military weapons not having torches is indeed absurd) or you can be happy (because the trade-off between good visibility and combat-readiness is a fun conceit) -- bitterness for those who are fortunate enough to fall into the latter camp from those whose critical faculties damn them to the former is, however, unseemly.



Has to be? No. Should be? Maybe not. Can be? Well that's the stinger, isn't it -- it absolutely can be of a lower quality, can bubblegum, and it would have gotten away with it too if it wasn't for you meddling ki... oh, wait, it's gotten away with it anyhow. I'm not so much criticising your standards as your expectations, if that makes sense. I have no doubt MGS4's shortcomings are as described in this thread but, in the real world, from Konami, though distribution and retail, all the way down to the magazine reviewers and the general public, nobody gives a toss about how right you are. They are, it seems, too busy making money and having fun, and it's hard -- like, really incredibly difficult -- to see how that could possibly be a problem that needs 'fixing'.

Cheer up, 1 & 3 were good so we're due a cracker with 5.

Or 9, maths fans.

I've not played Doom 3, but the torch hting sounded from the accounts I've read of several reliable players, like a cheap gimmick to hobble the player by making them blind half the time. That's lousy design. I don't really care if it's not realistic. System Shock 2 had all sorts of unrealistic things - weapons degrading after a dozen shots, for one thing - but it could be worked around, and served simply to balance the different playing styles. Blinding the player for half of the game so you can't even see what you're shooting in a, er, shooter, though, is bollocks.

You're talking as if I approach every game from a hyperritical standpoint. I really don't. I can see the flaws in loads of games I play, but love them anyway because the rest makes up for it. Games that are full of hideous flaws and bore me to death, though, are another matter.

If you look at the parts where I talk about the actual game in MGS4 - the first few chapters - I liked them. My first few posts were full of hope and promise, and I nitpicked a little but it didn't matter much because the game was still being fun at least half the time. As the game went on though, the flaws piled up and the great bits all but disappeared. There were no guinea pigs in the epilogue.

Professional reviewers should be even more critical than I am. It's their job.

Having just stumbled across this rather excellent forum (I must have missed the WoS exodus a little while back), I thought I'd throw my hat into the ring regarding MGS4.

I actually really enjoyed playing this game. I think it's very much a feature of the MGS games that you could give each one 2/10, 4/10 or 8/10 and each mark would be completely correct. If you approach it as a 'typical' video game then this will have you grinding your teeth to bloody stumps as it repeatedly snatches control away, lounges languidly in self-love and cliche, and makes incessant in-jokes. If, on the other hand, you approach it as someone who already loves the MGS series, who has played through all (and I do mean ALL) of the other games at least once, and ideally multiple times, who can overlook its quirks and are willing to accept it as a 16-hour movie that lets you play through most of the action sequences, then it's one of the greatest games created to date.

This is indeed a long list of criteria that need to be fulfilled for you to enjoy this game, and I can break it down a little. This game doesn't just continue the saga. Indeed not. It deifies it. Although there are mechanical improvements (which I'll come onto), pretty much every idiosyncrasy of the series has been enshrined and plays out over the course of the story. Similarly the game isn't so much weighted down by cut scenes as comically staggering about under a cut-scene elephant balanced on its head. The cut-scenes no longer frame the action - if anything, it's the other way around with the gameplay being so completely subservient to the story-telling that it's no longer the primary focus. This isn't a game that's telling you a story - it's a story that occasionally lets you take over.

The game (if you can still call it that) does tie up the MGS story arc nicely. However, it takes it for granted that you are pretty familiar with the story of the past 4 games (including Portable Ops on the PSP). It constantly references past games, and without that knowledge the plot will be truly incomprehensible. It also references past in-jokes, boss patterns, gameplay exploits...

Regarding the mechanics themselves, they've been considerable cleaned up. The camo suit is far more user-friendly than MGS3's need to constantly change camouflage manually, the cover mechanic makes fighting a viable option (rather than a punishment for being discovered) and the hand-to-hand combat options make taking down unsuspecting enemies sadistically enjoyable. The bosses are varied and (mostly) enjoyable, although some of the latter ones do degenerate into (surprisingly enough) glorified cut-scenes.

If it seems like I've spent a long time talking about the game's faults, it's because therein lies the crux of whether or not you'll enjoy this game. If you're a committed fan of the series and can overlook its faults, then I can't see you not enjoying this. This game is effectively cold-filtered 110 proof Metal Gear Solid, concentrated to a degree that renders it completely unpalattable to anyone but the committed fan. If you're not a fan, this won't be the game to ease you into the series - it will remain cold, aloof...somewhat like being trapped in a room with a group of close friends make in-jokes and reference events that you can't possibly understand. If you're looking at the complaints on this thread and thinking 'blood hell...how could anyone enjoy this game', then it's almost certain that you won't. I'm not sure I've ever come across a sequel so unapologetically dedicated only to its committed fans.

In the spirit of the game itself, I'll end with a cliche. If you're a fan of the series, you'll love this. If not, stay well away.

I could stand it being fanboys only, if they just admitted it. If they just said to themselves "yeah, it's shit really, but I love it". I can do that - I listen to Gerry Rafferty for fuck's sake. But I don't give it perfect scores, say it's the best ever and tell people it's worth spending £300 just to listen to Shipyard Town.

Reviewers shouldn't review a game for fanboys - they should review it as it stands next to every other game. As such, the scores should be low, and amended with "but if you loved all the pretentious, nonsense shite in the other games, and don't want to influence events in any meaningful way, you're going to buy it regardless of what I say anyway, so add another 70% and admit that you love shit games. There's no shame in loving crap things. Just don't kid yourself, or the rest of us."

They've mostly done the opposite - given it high marks and said fanboys will love it, but everyone else will hate it. This is totally unfair on everyone else.

Hi Darth Judo and welcome! Always nice to have new faces around.

'fraid I have to disagree with you though. From what Sinister Agent said of the plot and characters it didn't strike me as a story worth telling, therefore I'm confused as to why people are excited. If earlier stories were superior and this one has the incidents that Sinister Agent details, I'm further confused as to why people aren't cross that it botched it. If a game wants to have a dominant narrative and lots of cut scenes, then it judged by the same criteria that a film and/or TV series is judged by. No matter how good the action, if you can't believe in what you're doing because you're playing an idiot amongst an army of idiots then you can't call it a good game. If games are going to make that genuine great leap to 'interactive storytelling' (AGH! What a zeitgeisty word!) then maybe we'll have to start reviewing them as harshly as we do films, taking into account character development, plot, dialogue and pacing and everything. MGS4 doesn't seem to score well from the above SA review.

I guess I'm just baffled by this, "It's frequently bizarrely stupid, keeps snatching control away from you, has annoyingly lengthy cutscenes, makes no real sense, has many gameplay flaws and is overwhelming pretentious but if you love the previous MGS's, then you're going to love this!" opinion.

Still, welcome all the same. And I have to admit I haven't played it, so I'm going on a dozen reviews I've read. Sinister Agent's being one of the few dissenting but most compelling in my opinion. Anyway, welcome! And I look forward to agreeing with you in future on many different things, just not this one.

Hope you enjoy it here!

Doom 3's torch mechanics were brilliant. Brilliant. I've not seen a better tension generating device ever. (Silent Hill's radio springs to mind, but that just wasn't as good.) Having to have your torch out and then fumble for a gun as something leapt into your puny area of light, only to then be plunged into darkness and have to fire off rounds at a vague shape glistening in the dark never got old.

I fucking loved Doom 3 and I'll never understand why most people thought it was rubbish. It just had the perfect development curve, from being a tiny insignificant little man scared of every sound to the final rampaging badass you became by the end.

Doom's my favourite game of all time, so I was predisposed to be all "what have they done with my game, the cunts!" about it, but, no, I loved it to bits.

(There was one fucking shit boss I had to cheat past lest I explode with rage, actually, but that was the only bad spot in the game.)

I never played Doom 3 -- I really, really should -- but I always thought this would be the case. It sounded like a clever mechanic to me.

Aliens Vs Predator 2 did the same thing with light - the night vision was utterly useless as the second you fired, you were blinded, and the flares were useless. The shoulder lamp was the only useful thing for the marine, but een then, 70% of the time you were being atacked by unseen things and just firing aimlessly into darkness. It was really irritating. The first, by contrast, gave you useful flares and night vision that meant you could generally see anywhere. It was still terrifying and aliens still managed to jump and surprise and scare the crap out of you even after months of play. It just seems like a cheap design ploy to me. You might as well just play with the monitor switched off if you're going to spend half the game blind anyway.

I really enjoyed Doom 3 as well. There's not many of us about.

There probably is, you just can't see them.

Used sparingly, throwing the game into darkness can work well (one of the early levels of Doom for example) but stuff like Condemned where the whole bloody game is dark can be frustrating. The more I played that game, the darker it seemed to get - at one of the last levels I couldn't see where I was going at all so I went into the options to knock the brightness up a little more and it had reset the graphics settings back to the default which would be why I couldn't see a bloody thing.

If games are going to use contrasting light then they need to have decent brightness options. Bullet Witch, for example, has a crap 'turn your TV's brightness up till you can see this image' screen. Great, so you want me to crank up the brightness for this one game just to have to faff around with it again when I'm done... thanks!

The arguments for MGS make it sound like an abusive domestic relationship. "He must love me, he always buys me flowers to say sorry for punching me."

The overwhelming impression I got from SA's most excellent diary was that the game was being judged on the criteria it wanted to be judged on. A cinematic experience or (gngh) interactive movie. As such, the visuals, the direction etc got high praise and the writing, plot, characters got what seems to be a justified slating.

"10/10. Best. Game. Evar". Right, then as a game, it seemed to fail as well. Because breaking everything up with 70 minute cutscenes means there was no flow, no groove of gameplay. Time and again SA would write "Oh, I quite liked that bit and then they took control away from me".

Perhaps MGS4 is review-proof, in that it is impossible to judge it like a Super Mario Galaxy or a Halo. The fact that it lumped in with those games is a sign of how immature the industry really is. It would never happen in music, trying to compare the latest Leonard Cohen with a Trent Reznor album. So we end up with it on the same judging scale as Gran Turismo, people discussing MGS relative to GT and no magazine has the balls to say "sorry, but I just can't recommend this. Either you'll love it or you'll hate it and until you play it you'll never know which."

Gamers have this odd hive mind - they convince themselves something is good because everyone else says it is, and then they become the converted, preaching to everybody else. MGS4 is the latest in a long line of sacred cows. Hell, I was one of them when it came to Gran Turismo, until GT4. I didn't understand why it never clicked for me until it was skewered by RevStu with the precision of a laser scalpel.

I'm not sure I'm expressing my opinion particularly well. Twas ever thus.

With regards to MGS, I can see how it would appeal to fans, and not to non-fans, since if you're immersed in a world/story, then you grow familiar with the characters, situations and so on. I think the room full of friends cracking in-jokes is a good one.

I do see it as strange though. It is apparently a game that I am almost guaranteed to dislike since I've not played any MGS since the first one on the Playstation... and it gets scored highly? How can that be one of the best games ever made? Especially if the general consensus, even amongst fans, is that the game itself is okay, it's mostly about the story and cut scenes, most of which are rubbish... but if you love the 'world' and are used to it, you'll love the game.

Either way, I think it is one I'll avoid. Though if I had a PS3, I'd give it a rental, just to see for myself.

The first Aliens versus Predator game on the PC was terrifically balanced in this way. You only had 4 flares to put out at one time.

But if you decided to use your night vision you lost your motion tracker. I think they carried this through to AvP2 as well (although I think you had unlimited flares in AvP2) but it didn't work as well because all of the Alien positions in the game were pre-determined.

In the first AvP, all of the Aliens spawned at random positions and then made their way towards you, so you had absolutely no idea when you were going to encounter one.

True but equally, just because it's Trent doesn't mean it can't be shit.

MGS does something very different to Halo, GT, Mario.... that doesn't change the fact it appears to do it very very badly.

A game with 70 minute cut scenes, shortish levels and story driven COULD be good. This still isn't.

Hang on, that's a bullshit comment. Needing the torch was a huge part of the way Doom 3 was intended - if you think that's 'lousy design' then I think the fact that my bat didn't take up 95% of the screen height in Pong was lousy design, too.

But it's not the same thing. It's "Not being able to see what you're shooting" in a game about shooting, whereas your pong example would fit better if you could only see the ball when it was moving away from you. I don't know, it's just what I read, and it reminded me of how annoying AvP 2 was to play as the marine.

This topic is just packed full of box-quote gold.