Rapt0r wrote:Metal Gear Solid is just an interactive story. Each one gaining less and less actual gameplay and adding more and more videos. If you skip all the cutscenes and codecs, you'll blow through the game in 4 hours or so, easily. I'm not even talking about speed running either. My first MGS2 playthrough is 9 hours long. My third or so was only about 4 hours because I skipped all the videos. That's MORE THAN HALF the game spent watching movies. I'll admit some of that first playthrough was not knowing what to do, but most of it is pretty straight forward. Go here, do x, y unlocks, do z, go back to x, talk to a, etc.
I don't think so, Tim.
MGS was revolutionary, I don't think anyone can deny this. It was not solely because of gameplay, though, MGS as a game is not all that. Controls are kind of flakey and imprecise and graphics were good at the time, but then again everything was. But, the marriage of a great and complex story and the direct, action oriented gameplay was new. Final Fantasy? Sure, it may have had a good story, but the games were always about generic fantasy technobabble crystal **** were you gave orders to sprites or badly drawn 3D models. MGS played and looked and felt like an interactive action movie. Not only that, but a movie you were given the role of an actor, by deciding how to dispose of the enemies and which characters to interact with, and how.
MGS2 is were the revolution is at. No one really seems to remember, but MGS2, at the time it came out, was one of the best looking games on the PS2, along with one of the only FPS/action and free roaming hybrids. The transition from MGS to MGS2 was made with such detail and finesse that no one could come back to MGS after playing 2. The story was 5* as well, **** after **** up until the end, a parody of itself and the first game, and then a parody of action games in general. It is initially one of these, then mocks itself, then becomes something else entirely. I still hold MGS2 very dear in my heart, and I don't think anyone can deny that it is one of the most replayable games out there, just getting dog tags, finishing the bonus stories in Substance and the hundreds of training missions... It's kind of overwhelming. But of course, everyone focus on "LULZ RAIDEN?! MOAR LIEK GAYDEN LOLOLOL" and MGS3 completely overshadowed it, leaving most people to think that MGS2 was the weakest link in the series, when in fact I find it to be either the very best or close to it.