Anyone think MGS4 is better now after V?

[Ambient_Malice]

That's the first time I've read of MGSV being compared to Far Cry. They're not even the same genre, so not sure how the comparison was drawn?

Metal Gear Solid V is blatantly influenced by Ubisoft's Far Cry games. (Which are very different to Crytek's Far Cry. Largely because they were nothing more than Ubisoft exploiting the Far Cry name for profit.)

It's a hybrid of Far Cry 2, Far Cry 3, and Red Dead Redemption. You wander/drive/ride your way around barren landscapes, encountering the occasional base you can conquer, looking for diamonds and hunting an elusive antagonist by doing a bunch of side missions with the occasional more scripted main mission.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

That's the first time I've read of MGSV being compared to Far Cry. They're not even the same genre, so not sure how the comparison was drawn?

Metal Gear Solid V is blatantly influenced by Ubisoft's Far Cry games. (Which are very different to Crytek's Far Cry. Largely because they were nothing more than Ubisoft exploiting the Far Cry name for profit.)

It's a hybrid of Far Cry 2, Far Cry 3, and Red Dead Redemption. You wander/drive/ride your way around barren landscapes, encountering the occasional base you can conquer, looking for diamonds and hunting an elusive antagonist by doing a bunch of side missions with the occasional more scripted main mission.

Wouldn't you say that's a pretty broad generalization? The same could be said about Ubisoft's Far Cry's being influenced by Grand Theft Auto and Just Cause. As for the FPS genre barring vehicles we could throw in STALKER's influence, since you basically go from place to place, clearing out bases or hideouts, gathering items, etc.

I guess my point is a good number of games can be made to sound similar on some general level, but MGSV certainly has enough meat to differentiate itself beyond clone status.

 

[Ambient_Malice]

That's the first time I've read of MGSV being compared to Far Cry. They're not even the same genre, so not sure how the comparison was drawn?

Metal Gear Solid V is blatantly influenced by Ubisoft's Far Cry games. (Which are very different to Crytek's Far Cry. Largely because they were nothing more than Ubisoft exploiting the Far Cry name for profit.)

It's a hybrid of Far Cry 2, Far Cry 3, and Red Dead Redemption. You wander/drive/ride your way around barren landscapes, encountering the occasional base you can conquer, looking for diamonds and hunting an elusive antagonist by doing a bunch of side missions with the occasional more scripted main mission.

Wouldn't you say that's a pretty broad generalization? The same could be said about Ubisoft's Far Cry's being influenced by Grand Theft Auto and Just Cause. As for the FPS genre barring vehicles we could throw in STALKER's influence, since you basically go from place to place, clearing out bases or hideouts, gathering items, etc.

I guess my point is a good number of games can be made to sound similar on some general level, but MGSV certainly has enough meat to differentiate itself beyond clone status.

I'm not saying it's a clone, but the influence is very apparent. The outposts, the diamond hunting, the mission structure and so on.

MGS V also borrowed elements from Splinter Cell: Blacklist, another Ubisoft title. (Splinter Cell and MGS have been imitating each other for years, though, so it's kinda fair game.) Ubisoft's games have been extremely influential across the industry, although they often repackage ideas from other games into a new, slick package.

For example, Ubisoft's iconic "injector" healing system from their Far Cry games is very similar to the healing system from 2005 FPS Cold Winter.

http://webmshare.com/Qxe7z

I would not at all be surprised to learn someone on the Far Cry 2 team played Cold Winter. But of course if you release an FPS game today and use injections to the wrist/arm to heal, people will accuse you of being a "Far Cry clone".

 

[Foolery]

That's the first time I've read of MGSV being compared to Far Cry. They're not even the same genre, so not sure how the comparison was drawn?

Metal Gear Solid V is blatantly influenced by Ubisoft's Far Cry games. (Which are very different to Crytek's Far Cry. Largely because they were nothing more than Ubisoft exploiting the Far Cry name for profit.)

It's a hybrid of Far Cry 2, Far Cry 3, and Red Dead Redemption. You wander/drive/ride your way around barren landscapes, encountering the occasional base you can conquer, looking for diamonds and hunting an elusive antagonist by doing a bunch of side missions with the occasional more scripted main mission.

Wouldn't you say that's a pretty broad generalization? The same could be said about Ubisoft's Far Cry's being influenced by Grand Theft Auto and Just Cause. As for the FPS genre barring vehicles we could throw in STALKER's influence, since you basically go from place to place, clearing out bases or hideouts, gathering items, etc.

I guess my point is a good number of games can be made to sound similar on some general level, but MGSV certainly has enough meat to differentiate itself beyond clone status.

It is a broad generalization. MGSV's core gameplay; the mission-based structure, side ops, consecutive CQC, fulton extraction, base building, staff recruitment/management, tech/weapon development, cassette tapes, and so on, all came from Peacewalker. It's far more of sequel to that game, than it is to the rest of the series.

Anyway, to address the main topic. Yeah, I actually prefer MGS4 to 5. I thought the narrative was better, more focused, and you had actual bosses to fight, say what you want about the B&B unit, but they were far more interesting than the Skulls. 4 wasn't bogged down in repetitive missions, and while linear, had more than two whole maps.

 

[Ambient_Malice]

It is a broad generalization. MGSV's core gameplay; the mission-based structure, side ops, consecutive CQC, fulton extraction, base building, staff recruitment/management, tech/weapon development, cassette tapes, and so on, all came from Peacewalker.

It's not that simple. Phantom Pain is indeed Peace Walker's successor, but the actual gameplay has some stark differences. The open world structure which defines the way the missions are delivered to the play and executed is blatantly influenced by Far Cry 2 in particular. Peace Walker was not a sandbox game. You didn't run around Africa looking for diamonds. You didn't smugly complete missions by climbing a nearby hill and firing a carefully aimed missile at the target from half a kilometer away.

The whole "emergent open world FPS" thing arguably began with Stalker, but the formulaic version Ubisoft introduced with Far Cry 2 has clearly influenced MGS V, as well as pretty much every other open world FPS game with any sense of "realism". One interesting trait of Far Cry 2 was that it didn't actually have a lot of cutscene running time because anytime there was a cutscene, allthecharacterstalkedreallyfast. I can't help thinking that in addition to Mad Max, Kojima was probably influenced by Far Cry's 2's focus on gameplay over cutscenes.

You can even draw parallels, however thin, between Metal Gear Solid V's obsession with vocal cord parasites, and the malaria parasites that are are primary game mechanic in Far Cry 2.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

If i had to replay one now it would be 5.

But both had bad storys, but in very different ways, but at least 5 has the gameplay to fall back on.

 

[baddude1337]

I find the gameplay to still be pretty enjoyable, as well as the initial premise of sneaking around on a battlefield. But the story did absolutely overwhelm the gameplay, even for an MGS game. And even as someone who likes the MGS story it was simply far, far too much. I think skipping the cutscenes the game wouldn't take more than a few hours to beat.

V did the complete opposite, and had basically no story along with a massive amount of repetitive secondary missions (Especially the 'second act'). And what story was there I personally thought was pretty bad, and a lot of the tech involved was far too advanced for the time even in the MGS universe (Sahalanthropus especially).

I don't know about better. In terms of story at least MGS4 had something and resolved pretty much every loose end, but the gameplay is outdated to V's. V on the other hand had a pretty meh story that didn't add anything to the overall plot in any way. They both still have strengths and weaknesses in different areas.

 

[Arina Love]

Well, i absolutely HATED MGSV and love MGS4. MGSV betrayed everything that is good about the series (and the main reasons i'm a MGS fan) and replaced it with absolutely boring open world devoid of character and atmosphere. Very small cast of uninteresting characters and villains.

While i played through MGS4 about 5 times now,i had to force myself to finish MGS5 because 10 hours in i got really bored without the story and cinematic feel that i love MGS for. So yeah, MGS5 made me love MGS4 even more.

 

[Naldan]

MGS4 is worse because it's a PS3 exclusive. The only main title that is exclusive to a platform. Fuck that. I will never be able to play this, especially after KONAMI turned into Literally Hitler. So that would make re-releases unlikely to get bought by me, except for maybe some day 5 bucks on Steam if it ever gets a release there.

5 is just bad with it's last chapter missing. Kojima wouldn't want you to ignore the story, I wouldn't want to ignore the story, too. So the story plays a big part for me. What good is a story when a big, crucial chunk of it is missing?

In essence, that makes 4 a good Long Play to watch on YouTube and 5 a hard subject to ignore.

5 could only be redeemed if KONAMI did a 180 on its behaviour and releases a 6 that makes 5 make more sense or includes 5's missing chapter in its prologue.

 

[Blitsie]

I felt both went into opposite extremes really, MGS 4 was obsessed with cutscenes and story to the point of sacrificing gameplay for it while 5 threw nearly all of that away for the sake of having a purely gameplay-driven package.

Both pretty much suffered from doing so if you ask me, I had an absolute ball with MGS 4 overall, it's one of my favorite PS3 experiences, but could never finish my second and third playthrough of it because damn, those cutscenes really become a slog after the first view.
MGS5 on the other hand has some of the best stealth-action gameplay I've experienced in a game, but I absolutely refuse to play it again because the story is absolute trash, its a turd sandwich monument to how someone can fuck up something so good so utterly badly, just thinking about the ending makes me want to go kick nanomachine puppies.

But yeah, both are great games which are victims to their own ambitions essentially if you ask me.

 

[Ambient_Malice]

5 is just bad with it's last chapter missing. Kojima wouldn't want you to ignore the story, I wouldn't want to ignore the story, too. So the story plays a big part for me. What good is a story when a big, crucial chunk of it is missing?

Metal Gear Solid V doesn't have a missing chapter. This is one of those weird myths that fans started based on data mining.


MGS V had a chapter cut. But Episode 51 takes place before the end of MGS V's timeline. It's a side story. I think this is where a lot of people seem to have misunderstood MGS V's structure. The ending of MGS V occurs when you kill Skull Face. You're meant to reflect on how empty and meaningless killing Skull Face was. How the pain won't go away and shit.

Chapter 2 is a series of side stories that ties up some plot threads, very much like everything in Peace Walker that occurs after you stop Peace Walker. When Quiet goes away and you recover her, or when you embark on the infamous "final mission", this is basically the same thing as Paz stealing Metal Gear Zeke in Peace Walker. There is no Chapter 3, unless you count the No Nukes ending. After you uncover the tweeeest, you are then given some audio tapes to listen to that cover the "truth" behind everything. This is a very Japanese way of telling a story -- where you put the most important story points into supplementary materials. Like an OVA or DLC or something like that.

MGS V has this meta thing going on where YOU are Venom Snake. You, the player. Hence the bizarre "why don't you choose your Metal Gear Online character during the prologue and then look at your own face in the mirror in a scene that won't be explained for 20-40 hours" thing.

"All aboard the ruse cruise," as they say.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

It is a broad generalization. MGSV's core gameplay; the mission-based structure, side ops, consecutive CQC, fulton extraction, base building, staff recruitment/management, tech/weapon development, cassette tapes, and so on, all came from Peacewalker.

It's not that simple. Phantom Pain is indeed Peace Walker's successor, but the actual gameplay has some stark differences. The open world structure which defines the way the missions are delivered to the play and executed is blatantly influenced by Far Cry 2 in particular. Peace Walker was not a sandbox game. You didn't run around Africa looking for diamonds. You didn't smugly complete missions by climbing a nearby hill and firing a carefully aimed missile at the target from half a kilometer away.

The whole "emergent open world FPS" thing arguably began with Stalker, but the formulaic version Ubisoft introduced with Far Cry 2 has clearly influenced MGS V, as well as pretty much every other open world FPS game with any sense of "realism". One interesting trait of Far Cry 2 was that it didn't actually have a lot of cutscene running time because anytime there was a cutscene, allthecharacterstalkedreallyfast. I can't help thinking that in addition to Mad Max, Kojima was probably influenced by Far Cry's 2's focus on gameplay over cutscenes.

You can even draw parallels, however thin, between Metal Gear Solid V's obsession with vocal cord parasites, and the malaria parasites that are are primary game mechanic in Far Cry 2.

Hmmm. It kinda sounds like the parallels you're drawing are simplifying the differences down to general mission structure (which could really apply to 90%+ of open world games), while ignoring all the other factors mentioned earlier that cannot be echoed from other games.

The main reason for the differences between PW and V are hardware limitations, originating on PSP. I remember reading somewhere that V's gameplay was always Kojima's ultimate goal. It's just a (minor imo) disappointment a better balance between old and new was never obtained.