Number 38: Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Konami 2001
Intro:
Excessively long and cool, the intro video seems like Hideo Kojima trying to mimick the much hated super-long opening credits of the movies he so much adores. It's impressive, but just too long. I play videogames to PLAY them, not to watch them. The menu is nice and interactive, though I still have difficulty readjusting to circle being the confirm and the X being cancel. It's a neat addition that every menu in the game is the same visually, from the load game menu to the Nodes.
Getting Going:
When I finally got to playing, I was assaulted by the most rushed crash course tutorial I have ever seen. Sure they tell you how to do things, but it all happens so fast! I spend the entire game wondering if certain controls were explained but I was too confused to learn it properly. It doesn't help that nearly ALL of the controls are explained at once, so besides being a relentless assault to begin with, it becomes a steady and merciless shelling that I just hid through so I could make sure I had my whole screen availible through. The controls, however, are quick to pick up and all the really necessary things are taught.
Fun:
I guess a lot of people out there really like sneaking around. And I guess I'm not one of them. But hell, I still enjoyed this game way too much. I'm not too keen on sneaking around, but this game makes it fun and easy to be a highly trained secret operative. Some bits of control were touchy and frustrating, but not enough to really distract from the thrill of sneaking up behind a Commie mercenary and popping a little sedative dart through their ski-mask. I get sick of all that slow-paced hide-and-memorize covert stuff (Cobra!), so I tried the good ol' run-and-gun approach and found it mostly doable in the earlier parts of the game. When the going gets tough, however, being agressive and impulsive is punished with a mysteriously steady stream of camo'ed Russians. I know my frustration is entirely a matter of personal taste, because while I whined about all the sneaking and waiting I was secretly loving every moment of it. Go figure.
Visuals:
Stunning. Something about those fuzzy skimasks made me BELIEVE they were knit from rugged yarn in a Russian factory by miserable and drunk old ladies. I could almost smell the vodka. The environments are a wee bit sparse and simply designed, and the flat lighting didn't help, but those kinds of concerns are second to the level of detail. OH GOD THE DETAIL. I never once found a spot where I wondered why it had any more or less attention than another corner. This perfect balance completely offsets the dry and repetitive textures by expressing to the player that government ships and clean-up facilities are not exciting or pretty, not that the designers were fighting with a new platform and had to scale things back a little to keep a smooth frame rate.
Intelligence:
I'm always a little frustrated by the Metal Gear Solid games, since I can be staring a guy straight in the face and if I'm not within fifteen yards of the computer, I might as well not be there at all. Once they see me, I know I'm very much screwed. Not just the sudden flood of fresh enemies, but knowing that if I can't get a shot off really quick or get out of there, I should start fashioning my coffin right then and there because these guys gang up on me, dodge, and will empty clips as quickly as I can. Their patterns aren't inspired or creative, but their behavior when the player makes a noise or does something else to get noticed is very realistic seeming and fun to respond to.
Immersion:
As the Visual bit mentions, the balance in detail makes the game HIGHLY immersive. Nothing in the game environment distracts the player from the matter at hand, and even the fan service and the nerdy jokes that fill the game seem to fit perfectly into the MGS2 world. Spending most of the game as a different character is a little distracting, but the difference only really lies in the story. The long LONG LOOOOOOOOOOOONG in-game movies are a little distracting, but usually too pretty to take the player far. Long intercom conversations, however, do not have the redeeming visuals to make them fun to watch and get VERY VERY distracting. I'm a huge story and plot guy, but this stuff was rediculous.
Cameras:
The camera was very similar to that of Metal Gear Solid, in that it looked at every room in a "North is Up" point of view, which was fine until the player reached a corner they couldn't see around. Camera Control is highly limited, and a lot of times the angles were mostly good but just wrong for one reason or another. The first person mode helps this lack of control a little, but the player can't move in this POV so they depend on looking around EVERY SINGLE CORNER to make their way through.
Controls:
The basic necessities are fun to use and play with, but more advanced things are cumbersome or unexplained. To this day, I don't know how to carry bodies or snap people's necks, and I've already beaten the game once. The firing controls are a great use of the analog buttons, but if I'm not dead certain of when I want to fire they can become a problem. Running against walls to flatten myself out was a bit tricky, too, and the lack of good camera control was a bit of a downer.
Ideas:
Finding nodes was more annoying than interesting. Sneaking around is fun, i guess, but I tend to play videogames for more cathartic experiences than putting a whole lot of time and energy into avoiding conflict. The intercom conversations were just way too long, and the ending took far too much explanation. Long videos were fun as long as they furthered the story, but the intro was just terribly excessive.
Memory:
Very deep and emersive, I was only frustrated by how difficult the game seemed. I wished I could've been a lot more impulsive and confrontational, but that's just my tastes talking. The story was twisted and exciting, and the graphics were downright gorgeous. High-concept film-like fun from Hideo Kojima with both a serious side and an almost parrallel nerdfest full of inside jokes and neat little details in unexpected places for the dork in all of us.
Excessively long and cool, the intro video seems like Hideo Kojima trying to mimick the much hated super-long opening credits of the movies he so much adores. It's impressive, but just too long. I play videogames to PLAY them, not to watch them. The menu is nice and interactive, though I still have difficulty readjusting to circle being the confirm and the X being cancel. It's a neat addition that every menu in the game is the same visually, from the load game menu to the Nodes.
Getting Going:
When I finally got to playing, I was assaulted by the most rushed crash course tutorial I have ever seen. Sure they tell you how to do things, but it all happens so fast! I spend the entire game wondering if certain controls were explained but I was too confused to learn it properly. It doesn't help that nearly ALL of the controls are explained at once, so besides being a relentless assault to begin with, it becomes a steady and merciless shelling that I just hid through so I could make sure I had my whole screen availible through. The controls, however, are quick to pick up and all the really necessary things are taught.
Fun:
I guess a lot of people out there really like sneaking around. And I guess I'm not one of them. But hell, I still enjoyed this game way too much. I'm not too keen on sneaking around, but this game makes it fun and easy to be a highly trained secret operative. Some bits of control were touchy and frustrating, but not enough to really distract from the thrill of sneaking up behind a Commie mercenary and popping a little sedative dart through their ski-mask. I get sick of all that slow-paced hide-and-memorize covert stuff (Cobra!), so I tried the good ol' run-and-gun approach and found it mostly doable in the earlier parts of the game. When the going gets tough, however, being agressive and impulsive is punished with a mysteriously steady stream of camo'ed Russians. I know my frustration is entirely a matter of personal taste, because while I whined about all the sneaking and waiting I was secretly loving every moment of it. Go figure.
Visuals:
Stunning. Something about those fuzzy skimasks made me BELIEVE they were knit from rugged yarn in a Russian factory by miserable and drunk old ladies. I could almost smell the vodka. The environments are a wee bit sparse and simply designed, and the flat lighting didn't help, but those kinds of concerns are second to the level of detail. OH GOD THE DETAIL. I never once found a spot where I wondered why it had any more or less attention than another corner. This perfect balance completely offsets the dry and repetitive textures by expressing to the player that government ships and clean-up facilities are not exciting or pretty, not that the designers were fighting with a new platform and had to scale things back a little to keep a smooth frame rate.
Intelligence:
I'm always a little frustrated by the Metal Gear Solid games, since I can be staring a guy straight in the face and if I'm not within fifteen yards of the computer, I might as well not be there at all. Once they see me, I know I'm very much screwed. Not just the sudden flood of fresh enemies, but knowing that if I can't get a shot off really quick or get out of there, I should start fashioning my coffin right then and there because these guys gang up on me, dodge, and will empty clips as quickly as I can. Their patterns aren't inspired or creative, but their behavior when the player makes a noise or does something else to get noticed is very realistic seeming and fun to respond to.
Immersion:
As the Visual bit mentions, the balance in detail makes the game HIGHLY immersive. Nothing in the game environment distracts the player from the matter at hand, and even the fan service and the nerdy jokes that fill the game seem to fit perfectly into the MGS2 world. Spending most of the game as a different character is a little distracting, but the difference only really lies in the story. The long LONG LOOOOOOOOOOOONG in-game movies are a little distracting, but usually too pretty to take the player far. Long intercom conversations, however, do not have the redeeming visuals to make them fun to watch and get VERY VERY distracting. I'm a huge story and plot guy, but this stuff was rediculous.
Cameras:
The camera was very similar to that of Metal Gear Solid, in that it looked at every room in a "North is Up" point of view, which was fine until the player reached a corner they couldn't see around. Camera Control is highly limited, and a lot of times the angles were mostly good but just wrong for one reason or another. The first person mode helps this lack of control a little, but the player can't move in this POV so they depend on looking around EVERY SINGLE CORNER to make their way through.
Controls:
The basic necessities are fun to use and play with, but more advanced things are cumbersome or unexplained. To this day, I don't know how to carry bodies or snap people's necks, and I've already beaten the game once. The firing controls are a great use of the analog buttons, but if I'm not dead certain of when I want to fire they can become a problem. Running against walls to flatten myself out was a bit tricky, too, and the lack of good camera control was a bit of a downer.
Ideas:
Finding nodes was more annoying than interesting. Sneaking around is fun, i guess, but I tend to play videogames for more cathartic experiences than putting a whole lot of time and energy into avoiding conflict. The intercom conversations were just way too long, and the ending took far too much explanation. Long videos were fun as long as they furthered the story, but the intro was just terribly excessive.
Memory:
Very deep and emersive, I was only frustrated by how difficult the game seemed. I wished I could've been a lot more impulsive and confrontational, but that's just my tastes talking. The story was twisted and exciting, and the graphics were downright gorgeous. High-concept film-like fun from Hideo Kojima with both a serious side and an almost parrallel nerdfest full of inside jokes and neat little details in unexpected places for the dork in all of us.