Thrik

Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain

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Making two disks to tell the story of a guy before and after a coma is such a cool idea that I could almost get behind releasing it as two seperate games. It reminds me of putting the codec no. on the back of the game box.

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What? He was animatronic? Or it was Kojima wearing a fake head? I don't understand anything.

 

Kojima was wearing the weird bandage helmet thing that revealed his real mouth, but the eye area was animatronic or something. He showed up to the GDC talk as Joakim Mogren, then pulled the fake face off after the trailer ended.

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Kojima was wearing the weird bandage helmet thing that revealed his real mouth, but the eye area was animatronic or something. He showed up to the GDC talk as Joakim Mogren, then pulled the fake face off after the trailer ended.

 

 

edit. whoops read your post wrong. I actually do understand now.

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So I guess Metal Gear Solid V is actually two games? Ground Zeroes is pre-coma and Phantom Pain is post-coma.

 

I don't think that's an excuse. I've heard of Garbage, and I'm some kind of zygote.

 

Yeah, Joystiq got the same message on it being two games. Interesting.

 

I don't really know why either of you thought that my comment suggested I don't know who Garbage is. I'm fully aware of them so I don't need an excuse. I was going for wordplay, not ignorance.

 

I'm hoping this just means it's like MGS2 where it's the tanker and plant chapters and not two different games I have to purchase.

 
I wouldn't count on it!  :violin:

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I don't really know why either of you thought that my comment suggested I don't know who Garbage is. I'm fully aware of them so I don't need an excuse. I was going for wordplay, not ignorance.

 

Phrasing. Saying "a band called Garbage" instead of "Garbage" is superfluous; hence it carries the connotation that you believe not many people know who Garbage is, hence you don't know who Garbage is. It's the same kind of phrasing that a 65 year old white male American senator uses to describe things they have no idea about.

 

For instance, saying "the technology called the Internet" makes you sound like you have no idea what you're talking about.

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Phrasing. Saying "a band called Garbage" instead of "Garbage" is superfluous; hence it carries the connotation that you believe not many people know who Garbage is, hence you don't know who Garbage is. It's the same kind of phrasing that a 65 year old white male American senator uses to describe things they have no idea about.

 

For instance, saying "the technology called the Internet" makes you sound like you have no idea what you're talking about.

 

Fair point, but my wordplay hinged on the band being called Garbage and therefore the possibility that I would call this trailer garbage. Also, I can both know who Garbage is and believe that not many people know who Garbage is (which I do in fact believe).

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Fair point, but my wordplay hinged on the band being called Garbage and therefore the possibility that I would call this trailer garbage. Also, I can both know who Garbage is and believe that not many people know who Garbage is (which I do in fact believe).

 

Yeah, hence my initial reaction that led to the realization that the world has changed and I'm now old.

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That certainly seems to be the truth for the Solid series. Although I'd say Metal Gear 2 is far superior to the first one and Metal Gear Acid 2 is refined to perfection.

 

Where do Peacewalker and Portables Ops really fit in? Haven't played Peacewalker, but I gritted my teeth through the crap that is Portable Ops just for the storyline.

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I really liked MGS2, but maybe that's because I wasn't really a PlayStation owner in the normal cycle until the PS3. I played MGS2 first on the original Xbox, then I played MGS1 briefly on a PS2 and didn't take to it much. I eventually played through MGS1 on Gamecube via Twin Snakes, but I still liked 2 more.

 

Man, I could go for a hell of a lot more Metal Gear Acid.

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Man, I could go for a hell of a lot more Metal Gear Acid.

 

I hear this sentiment a lot, and wholeheartedly agree, so where the hell is my Ac!d 3, Konami? Put in on iOS/Vita and let me have my damn card-based fun.

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MGS2 is the obvious creative peak of the series; it's the most risky and experimental one by far.

 

I don't understand how someone could have an interest in Kojima's work and not appreciate Sons of Liberty. It's the magnum opus, you know? It's the one people will talk about when Kojima dies.

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Agreed. Well, it's not my favourite, but I do love MGS2. The first time I played it I was literally going "wat" and I actually didn't get it for years, probably because I was like 13 when I played it or something. When I replayed it years later I totally understood what Kojima was trying to say, and also had a greater appreciation for the misdirection and attempts to disorientate. It really was a very clever game, and as crazy as it was the message has only become more meaningful as information control continues to increase and we become increasingly reliant on what we see through screens and websites to know what's going on with the world.

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MGS2 is written to be the ultimate game to be written about. It is loaded with all that academic stuff that's fun to sift through and connect together. I still think Raiden being an analogue for the player is a great conceit. It's fully fleshed out in every way conceivable, and it was a total success in that it offended the people it meant to without them ever knowing why. The heady, up-in-the-clouds stuff is all great. I just think the characters and the plot are awful. The fact that you spend the entire game failing at everything you try to do doesn't make for a fun video game, as much as it might make for a great meta-message. Vamp/Solidus/Fortune/Fatman/Olga is not cool, his/her dialogue is lame, his/her boss battle is boring, etc.

 

In all fairness, watching video of these games I used to love they all look like anime bullshit to me now  :yawn:. I have gone from the 12-year-old who would call everyone on the codec at every opportunity in MGS to the 20-something PC gamer for whom this kind of story telling just doesn't work anymore. But I guess you guys win, because I just grabbed my PC copy of MGS2 of the shelf and I'm installing it right now. 

 

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Ah man, the codec still does it for me. It's such a great concept that to this day no other game I can think of has really replicated. Some kind of go there, for example Darksiders and Zelda have your helper companion who you can summon for advice. But it's just not the same as it's always focused on your current task, whereas the MGS codec conversations are packed with tangents and incidental dialogue that really gives depth to the characters.

 

Some of my best gaming memories are just sitting in corners of secret Alaskan military installations, oil tankers, and Russian jungles listening to endless unimportant yet amusing stuff via codec. In one sense that's the one thing MGS4 often lacked: the absolute isolation you felt, which made the codec conversations even more compelling as they were your only line to the sane world.

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Yeah MGS2 is the coolest thing. I love the whole concept of being Raiden, and playing as a secondary character in Snake's story.

and a character who is a rookie at that.

 

Playing through MGS3 HD Edition currently on the 360. It's confirming my beliefs that The Boss's voice is just so fucking religiously solemn and monotone that she sounds like a cartoon impression instead of a person. She's really a big splinter stuck in the game's side if you ask me, but some people seem to love it.

It's reminding me, though, that the diligent explanations of Cold War technology, and using black n white photo montages, go a long way and are fun to watch. Having not played this in a long time; codec conversations really are fucking perfect. There's HOURS OF THIS SHIT! I can poke the medic AGAIN AND AGAIN and get fresh conversations about aligators, and milk snakes, and ink cap mushrooms. I can spend like 20 minutes just watching these guys talk about old movies.

Snake hasn't watched anything, so you get the impression he's kind of a boring old man, it's great!

 

I used to talk down MGS3 just cos I liked MGS2 more, but no this is some top notch stuff. Still my favourite sneaking game.

Although like-- a team as good as this shouldn't be a sequel house. They're very creative, capable guys.

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don't understand how someone could have an interest in Kojima's work and not appreciate Sons of Liberty. It's the magnum opus, you know? It's the one people will talk about when Kojima dies.

 

Because it's a failure in engaging storytelling and success in new mechanics for the series at the same time, that's why. MGS3 for instance, is not.

 

But don't even take my word for it. If you have the special edition blu-ray that came with MGS4, Kojima says he felt pressured to include more plot twists by fans of the twists in the first one and that he got a little bit carried away. He then apologized.

 

Metal Gear Solid 3 (or 1) does not come with an apology. I can understand why a Kojima or Metal Gear fan would like MGS2, maybe you should try understanding why the same type of fan wouldn't like MGS2.

 

Also let's not forget that Raiden's inclusion was foremost and always based on responses from females in a focus group. Yep, sounds incredibly subversive. <_<

 

Let's be honest here though, a lot of the faults in the storytelling among the whole series tends to stem from Kojima not always knowing what the fuck he's doing and caring whether it's good or not. I think people tend to give Kojima more credit to his narrative abilities than is actually deserved. See this malarky for reference: http://metagearsolid.org/2012/04/mgs2-review-chapter-1/

 

Having not played this in a long time; codec conversations really are fucking perfect. There's HOURS OF THIS SHIT! I can poke the medic AGAIN AND AGAIN and get fresh conversations about aligators, and milk snakes, and ink cap mushrooms. I can spend like 20 minutes just watching these guys talk about old movies.

 

And yet another great thing about the series that MGS2 was missing.

 

 

I'm not positive, but I get the feeling that most if not all of that art in that was included in the hardcover book that came with the HD collection judging by the page count.

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I think maybe my assessment of 2 and where it stands compared to the rest of the series is partly due to my lack of "reverence" for the series in general. I mean, I'd consider myself a huge fan of the games (from Metal Gear through Rising), but I only first played all of them within the past 5 years. (And I played them out of order.)

 

I didn't have the experience of approaching any of them with an inflated sense of nostalgia about the previous entries. It's entirely fresh in my mind how idiotic the narrative is in every single one of them. The bosses are ridiculous in all of them. People see Raiden as this big step down from Snake, but Snake is a complete tool.

 

They're all awkward to play and kind of backward... they hold onto series conventions well beyond sense, when multitudes of other games have found more natural solutions.

 

From my perspective, MGS2 is just peak Metal Gear; it's the apex of all of this ridiculous crap that I've come to love. I suppose I can see how that wouldn't be the case for someone who came at the games differently.

 

I do think people tend to have a distorted memory of MGS. That game is silly as hell. 

 

edit: I don't want to give the wrong impression here, though. It's not like I have an ironic appreciation of the series. That wouldn't be enough for me to have played MGS, MGS2, 3 and 4 to completion multiple times each and to unlock tons of bullshit in Peace Walker, and give MG and MG2 each a run through. I really do love playing them... they're fun, tense and engaging. The characters and events are pretty loopy though.

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Well I'm not actually coming from any nostalgia, I think I started tackling all of the games chronologically starting 2006 from Metal Gear MSX to MSG Touch. The only one I've missed out on chronologically is Metal Gear Solid Mobile because there is no way to play the full game now and so I only have the demo on my phone.

 

I don't necessarily see the peak being the ridiculous shit coming to full culmination. I find it best when that stuff gets relegated to easter eggs and things to within the game, but when it consumes the narrative in a long winded mass of bullshit, I stop caring. The last 2-3 hours of MGS2 was nothing but that and it was obnoxious outside of laughing at the absurdity of the who multiple triple cross situation. I don't see how what you value has to be the same for everyone else to appreciate the series. If MGS3 can genuinely make me feel sad to the point of a tear or two, that's a much larger accomplishment over being annoyed and exhausted with two 45 minute cutscenes of badly written exposition with one short boss fight stuck in between in my opinion.

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I'm not positive, but I get the feeling that most if not all of that art in that was included in the hardcover book that came with the HD collection judging by the page count.

But look how much I can sell it for. Wat wat

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Everyone just goes round in circles if the discussion is which metal gear is better. I mean I don't think that the last 2-3 hours of 2 was a long winded mass of bullshit? I thought it was super tight. But then I don't know how the conversation gets beyond 'well I disagree' (which is obviously a completely understandable answer).

 

Also, yo is this that same art book for 50ish american US dollars instead of 338? 

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