Metal Gear: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

[Wolf Kanno]

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Since the franchises implosion along with Konami, we haven't discussed one of gamings darlings in a little while. So which games are your favorites, your not so favorites and why did you ever bother playing this series in the first place?

[Psychotic]

I'm still in a dream.

[WarZidane]

Started playing it due to a demo CD for the PS1 that contained the MGS demo, gameplay hooked me. My least favorite is MGS V, still good gameplay but I wasn't a fan of just constantly repeating the same damn base. :p

As for the story..the action sequences and over the top things are entertaining, but I always considered the overall story to be nonsense and pretentious. (guess that's why I'm not interested in constant no-gameplay-footage of Death Stranding :p )

[Rez09]

I started with Metal Gear on the NES, which I somehow acquired, likely through random pawn shop purchases. I loved the game, but I could never beat the tank, so I'd just play up until then, die, and come back to it later. It was kind of like Rygar that way.

My favorite in the series is MGS1 -- I love the setting, bosses, and twist to the game, and Rex is suuuuuuuuuuuch a great fight when you haven't figured out how to cheese it.

Least favorite would be MGS2, because, for all the mechanical improvements over 1 that I liked, I had to deal with the Big Shell, and I really hate that place, and the majority of the bosses outright suck. Especially the waves of Rays, that was crap, Rex > Ray.

[Wolf Kanno]

I played it because of the PS1 Demo and because all my friends kept telling me I would love it. Ended up coming true. I do think I actually played the original and Snake's Revenge on the NES as well but was too young and dumb to make sense of either of them so they stayed as rentals for me.

I already stated MGS3 is my fave entry, and that MGS4 is my least favorite, despite that, I actually don't hate MGS4, I simply felt it didn't live up to the lofty expectations fans had for it, which is on us I guess. Despite a lot of my issues with the gameplay, the later entries refined a bunch of the ideas so it's not like it's improvements went to waste.

I am surprised by all the hate MGSV gets. Even lacking some of the hallmarks of the franchise such as cutscenes up the wazoo and epic boss battles, the gameplay is unparalleled and I frankly feel the ending was absolutely clever. Even the lack of Episode 51 and some of the game's incomplete elements can't really mar the tight design, and I still feel some of the incomplete elements were intentional.

[Scotty_ffgamer]

I still have yet to really play most of MGSV, and I’ve never played Portable Ops, Snakes Revenge, or the MG on gameboy. Going by what I have played, Metal Gear Solid is definitely my favorite (although III is a close second.) I think it has my favorite set of bosses in any game, and I love everything from the gameplay to the atmosphere to the soundtrack. It also has a lot of nostalgia for me just because I was amazed by the game right from the first demo I played. To me, it is possibly closest to what I would call a perfect game.

My least favorite is definitely IV. I still enjoy playing Guns of the Patriots, but I feel like it is a mess. It was also the only game of the series where the cutscenes sometimes actively bores me, particularly the briefing parts between each section of the game. It still has cool moments, and i always wanted to like it more than I did. I always like to whistle that one tune from the game when I’m walking around the back room at work.

I can say I had tons of fun with Ground Zeroes and the little I played of Phantom Pain. I know the story won’t be what I want in the entirety of V, but the gameplay is extremely fun. Despite disagreeing with what they did with the release of Ground Zeroes, I actually feel like I got my money’s worth with it.

[Mr Gashtacular]

Might be my favorite franchise!

Friend had a pirated copy of the JP version before UK release so we all went over and played it together. We had no idea what was going on - searchlights, footprints and ventilation shafts. Next thing we know theres some naked dude bent over on the floor with his ass pixelated and a floating guy in a gas mask is dropping from the sky.

Bought it as soon as we good in the UK to play it more (in English this time) and it was even better. I guess in many ways it is dated now but at that point in time it was the most innovative game I had ever seen. All the little things you could do (get a dog to piss on your cardboard box so they won't attack you, psycho mantis reading your memory card) are such little things now but at the time it was amazing.


Best game would probably be Snake Eater - at the time of release it just seemed like a mastery of everything they had been trying to do. Against popular opinion I think MGS4 might be the second favorite for me - by the time it came out I was playing games less and less so to commit to one of this size was quite an unusual thing for me and came at exactly the right time. The whole "return to shadow moses, except its abandoned and you're old" thing was totally pandering to nostalgia but I'm not ashamed to admit it got me hook, line and sinker. It almost broke my heart to run across that helipad again.

MGSV I didn't even play for a long time, I tried getting into it a few times and failed. Then finally I guess I "got it" and didn't stop playing for like two weeks. It was excellent, but lacked the story I wanted (which I totally understand, because the story is incredibly dumb). Gameplay was awesome though.

[Lord Golbez]

MGS3 is probably my favorite overall. MGS5 is not as great storywise, but I think probably has the best gameplay in the series.

[Slothy]

I actually don't hate MGS4, I simply felt it didn't live up to the lofty expectations fans had for it, which is on us I guess.

I wouldn't put it all on the fans considering Kojima spent years promising all kinds of things for the game that either never even made it in there, or were such an utterly limited implementation of what he promised as to be completely useless and irrelevant. More than any other entry in the series I think, he Molyneuxed it hard.

[Lord Golbez]

I would argue that Konami kind of dropped the ball there, but he surely overpromised.

[Wolf Kanno]

To be fair to MGS4 here, MGSV is pretty much worse in every regard concerning "lots of unfulfilled promises" I can't even remember half the stuff Kojima promised for MGS4. I feel my biggest issues with the game stem from too many "Doing in the Wizard" moments with the Nanomachine handwave which really cheapened several of the more fun elements of the series, serious character rewrites for most of the returning MGS2 cast, and too many cheap player punches that feel ridiculous in hindsight like the FOXDIE subplot and Big Boss returning in the mid-credit scene just to explain the plot to the player before dying again.

I was also a bit disappointed that despite this gaming being a conclusion to Solid Snake, the game never really acknowledges the first two Metal Gear titles in any way outside of possibly retconning Dr. Madnar as being alive, assuming the character mentioned in MGS4 is the same one from MG2. I mean they could have at least had Holly White show up for a walk on. Also, what happened to Natasha from MGS1? It's like she wrote the Shadow Moses book in MGS2 and then dropped off the face of the earth.

From a gameplay standpoint, the heavier emphasis on action gameplay tweaks kind of made the game a bit more of a slog than I would care for. Outside of arbitrary grading, self-imposed challenges, and changing the amount of Drebin Points you get (which itself is ironic because you need to not fight in order to amass more points to buy weapons you can't use if you want them all) stealth just doesn't feel important in this entry. At least Ground Zeroes rebalanced the gameplay to make fire fights more deadly forcing you to try to limit them as much as possible while PW and PP have the soldier recruiting mechanic to keep it relevant.

[Vyk]

I only started with MGS on PS1. It was getting a lot of hype at the time for being cinematic and having riveting moments and pacing like a movie or whatever hyperbole they were giving it at the time. But I rented it to check it out and could not put it down. I took it back, and immediately went out to buy it to finish it. Loved it and probably would enjoy replaying it, but for some reason I never did. And the only other game in the franchise I played was 2, and since I didn't have an emotional connection to Snake, I didn't feel cheated when main characters were switched halfway through. I didn't really even hate Raiden as a character the way most people did. These days being an elite best of the best, is some tropey nonsense to explain away having someone so young replace someone so old. These days you have stories like that all over the place, but that might have been my first encounter with a Marty Stu like that, so it didn't rub me the wrong way yet. Though in some ways I must have still had a juvenile mindset because after that game I wanted nothing to do with MGS3, because I heard it was a prequel. So even though it looked and sounded like the Snake I knew, it wasn't the same Snake I knew, so I wasn't interested. And then MGS4 made the snake I did know old and on the verge of death, so I wasn't interested in that either, and just kinda lost interest on the franchise since the only other games were mobile schlock. I guess I appreciate that the franchise exists, but I don't appreciate what they did with it. Especially with the fifth one. I'm glad I wasn't following it now looking back. So I'm not really what you'd call a fan, but I still loved MGS

[Wolf Kanno]

Have we discussed how awesome the Voice Actors for this series are?

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[Rez09]

You know, now that you mention it, the original MGS was the first game I remember with voice acting that wasn't SO2/RE level bad -- like, people finally took the work seriously. I kind of appreciate that.

[Lord Golbez]

That's kind of ironic that they took it seriously when most of the dialogue is absolutely ridiculous, but the serious delivery of utter nonsense is kind of the charm of the series. I seem to remember Meryl's delivery being pretty bad though.

[Rez09]

Is it sad the only dialouge of her's I remember is her yelling at me for hiding under a table after attacking her?

[Lord Golbez]

Is it sad the only dialouge of her's I remember is her yelling at me for hiding under a table after attacking her?

Haha. What? They actually have dialogue for that? I kind of remember that you can attack her and she reacts to it, but I didn't know they included details like that in her reactions.

[Rez09]

Yeah, it's especially amusing because, as I recall anyway, Snake will automatically crawl out from wherever you are hiding when she does it and she kicks you for attacking her. I kind of wonder if they put in other ways to mess with Meryl in Twin Snakes.

[Vyk]

Wasn't that done by someone else? Though it wouldn't surprise me since they kept up the antics on sons of liberty. I remember threads on pervy antics. Like for some hostage situation there's supposed to be a girl wearing a skirt who will close her legs if you try to score a panty shot with a sniper scope and people said you could tranquilize her if you really wanted a look lol or you could knock out Otacons sister and go prone on top of her and then phone Otacon and supposedly he goes crazy yelling at you for messing with his sister

[Wolf Kanno]

All the ladies: Meryl, E.E., and Eva will say something if you stare too long at them in first person mode. Kojima put an insane level of detail into these games when it came to screwing around. If you have Raiden walk into the ladies restroom and go into a stall while down on one knee in front of the toilet, you can call the Colonel and Rosemary who chastise you for being perverted.

[Lord Golbez]

Codec calls are the best part if the series.

[Rez09]

'What do you mean it doesn't run out of ammo?'
'It has an infinity symbol carved on the chamber.'

[Sephex]

When I first heard about Metal Gear Solid it was in EGM. They had a huge feature on what a big game it was going to be. I was too hyped on Ocarina of Time in those days, and I never thought the NES version of Metal Gear was all that great, so I didn't really take the game seriously at first.

A friend bought it a few months after it came out. When I sat down and watched the game what drew me in of all things was how professional the voice acting was, especially when compared to other games at the time. My friend, having played the game a couple of times already, skipped cutscenes and codec conversations so when I borrowed it I would still be surprised by the story.

Not long after I borrowed my friend's copy and beat it, I secured my own copy and got every MGS game after that (of the main series) on day one. I love all of them to an extent. I am in the camp where I feel MGS3 was the best one even though all the menu diving you have to do (if you want to play stealth style) can get irritating.

I always think it's funny what fans of the series complain about sometimes. MGS2 has its problems, but one of things that baffled me about people dog piling on that game is that "the villains were over the top."

Oh, so a floating psychic, cosplay cowboy man, Native American stereotype wielding an aircraft mini gun, a pill popping sniper who is willing to wait weeks to get her target was all in the realm of possibility.

But a fat dude on roller blades. NOW YOU HAVE GONE TOO FAR!!!

Also, anyone who goes into a MGS game and complains about cheesy dialogue and long cutscenes is an idiot. You know what you are getting into by now since 2001 (the point where a lot of people think MGS started to truly go off the rails).

Anyway, I am sure someone will have a hair up their ass about my opinion, so HAVE AT YOU!!

*fights on top of Rex unit*

[sharkythesharkdogg]

I'm not really into Smash that much, but this is still pretty great.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqT1-zGWD50

[Wolf Kanno]

A little holiday cheer from the Snake family.

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