What's your opinion on the Metal Gear franchise?

[Quellist]

Never played the pre-PS1 games so i cant speak to them, but i loved the first PS1 entry, after that tho it seemed like Kojima was just making a series of "Fuck you's" toward people who played the earlier game. As far as im concerned the franchise is, in its current state, a steaming pile of shit and Kojima is an epic troll for getting away with it all.

 

[Zhukov]

[HAAAAATE]

Have you ever played Revengeance? AKA the only good Metal Gear game? Sure the plot is still... Wonky at times (brains?) but it is good, or at least entertaining to watch and you really have to try to find the out of place sexy bits. The dialogue is actually good and significantly less long winded and the gameplay is amazing. Platinum Games prove to be the best thing ever yet again. You know how the last bits of any Metal Gear game is like an hour of the last boss talking at you before a fight? Revengeance does that too... and it's awesome

Yeah... I'm afraid you're talking to the wrong person.

I couldn't stand Revengeance and I despise everything remotely connected to Platinum Games (with the possible exception of Bayonetta which was undeniably fascinating in a what-the-fuck-am-I-looking-at kind of way) . I only played it because my housemate owned a copy.

It's ugly as sin with empty, soulless environments and enough grey to make a modern military shooter look vibrant by comparison. The animation is jerky and lacks any sense of weight or flow. The combat... eh, it wasn't horrible. Could even have been okay if the animation was any good. Liked the parrying mechanic. Would have liked it more if they'd explained it properly. The slice and dice thing looked cool in trailers but it turned out gimmicky in gameplay, essentially just a glorified finishing move that got old after the third time you see it.

As for the story stuff... well, let's just say that I couldn't tell if it was written by Kojima or by someone doing a really good imitation of Kojima. Best thing I can say about the cutscenes and dialogue was that they were relatively short.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

Dialogue, story, pacing are total crap and insane. I dont even think Kojima knows what the fuck is going on. Controls are terrible, though last one i played was HD release, so maybe they fixed that on the PS3 game. But i still like playing them, i like the strange characters and boss fights even though the stories is complete nonsense. But that has kinda become the reason to play them, its like a bad B movie. lol. Though with the MGS5 they have really pushed the boat out with graphics and controls. I just wish he had someone to read and correct his scripts as they are just ridiculous. Or could that be down to crappy translation? Just like watching foreign movies.

 

[Zenn3k]

I started with MGS1 on the Playstation.

MGS1: Loved it, loved every single second of it, one of my favorite on that console. I also later played Twin Snakes Gamecube port, enjoyed that as well.

MGS2: HATED IT! Fuck Raiden. The graphics were great, but the story made no sense to me at the time and again..fuck Raiden.

MGS3: My favorite of the franchise. The best of the stealth mechanics really made it feel like the first true "sneaking mission" of them. The James Bond style intro music? Gold. The bosses were weird, but interesting to fight, the sniper duel being extra cool. I happily beat this title.

MSG4: Only played less than a hour of it, since I got my PS3 very late in its life-cycle. I may still yet to back through and play it as it seems good, just got distracted.

Never played Peace Walker.

I picked up Ground Zeros recently, been having fun with it, its really damn hard. The removal of the "radar" and giving the enemies more realistic sight has made things much harder, but in a good way. I very much look forward to playing Phantom Pain.

 

[DrOswald]

Very mixed feelings.

I like the characters and the absurd story, but I've never liked the actual gameplay. I've played most of the games up to MGS4 at least once, but honestly, I prefer to watch other people playing them. One of my roommates in college absolutely loved the franchise, so I'd watch him play the games from time to time, and really I enjoyed them more as movies.

As for which one I like best... I dunno. In terms of characters and story, probably MGS3. In terms of gameplay, probably MGS4 (not because it was actually anything special, but because it was just more refined than the games before it).

You should check out Chip Cheezum's lets play of the series. It is really good.

 

[PsychedelicDiamond]

I wouldn't go as far as to say that i love the series but i appreciate it a lot. There is a very distinctive artistic vision that Hideo Kojima has that you can't really find anywhere else. I still don't agree with some of his design decisions and i'm not really a fan of his overreliance on cutscenes and exposition in general to convey his story but unlike the David Cages of this world he actually knows how to make a good game and doesn't use cinematics to hide his inability do design an actual game.

Of course the style is not everyones cup of tea and i found it alienating at first too but i think now i understand what Kojima is going for. He takes complex political concepts like war, terrorism, government control, nuclear proliferation etc. and combines them with low brow pop culture like spy fiction, anime, 80s action movies and, obviously, videogames to highlight the inherent absurdity of these things. Or at least i think it's what he's going for but i might just give him too much credit.

 

[Artina89]

While I like the stories and the characters, I find the games to be a tad cut scene heavy. My favourite Metal Gear game is Metal gear rising: revengeance because it was a very cathartic hack and slash game. I found the final boss a tad frustrating, but the game was less cut scene heavy. I haven't picked up the newest Metal gear game yet as I want to get the new Phoenix Wright vs Professor Layton game for the 3DS instead.

 

[Alarien]

They can be really good (MGS1/MGS3), but they can also be pretty bad (MGS2), and even absolute shit (MGS4).

Favourite is MGS1 (not Twin Snakes). It was the first one I played and it keeps things relatively grounded, despite the masked psychics and cyborg ninjas. It also goes for a more subdued sadness, rather than the very blatent emotional gut punch of MGS3.

I think this is a reasonable assessment from my perspective.

I liked MGS1, though didn't absolutely love it. I enjoyed it and it's gameplay quite a bit. I thought 2 was "ok," but not particularly good and not nearly as good as 1. I didn't play three.

I absolutely despised 4. I thought it was the height of shit game design. The controls were terrible. The gunplay was terrible. The weapon damage was non-sensical. The story?

Ok, look, I like cut scenes. I like story. I am happy to sit through several minutes of dialogue or cut-scene just to delve more into a game story. I think my MGS game took around 15 hours? I think 8 of that was played time? Seriously, most of those cut-scenes or dialogue discussions (between Snake and Otakon mostly) went on so long that I either left or spent my time driving the stupid little cambot around and bashing it into their feet. God, it was horrible.

Also, some of the crap they did in that game's texture work is silly. I remember sitting in prone in front of a fire noticing that the fire was 3 wavy lines with a bad transparency textured over it. It looked hilariously bad, which is pretty laughable on the PS3, which had the ability to do pretty decent effects.

Nope MGS4 was the end of that series and me. I'll be opting out from now on.

Also, and this isn't Metal Gear's fault, I am just done with stealth games or games with forced stealth mechanics. MGS, Dishonored, Batman, Deus Ex... I am just tired of being given a character, told they are the "baddest !#@#er in the valley" and then told "oh, but sneak past all these dudes who would magically one-shot you" despite the fact that you just killed 20 of them in an epic beat down two minutes ago (LOOKING AT YOU, BATMAN). It's just tired. It's fine in games like Elder Scrolls where it's an option, but I am sick of games where it is either the forced or main mechanic (MGS, Batman) or where you are actively punished for not being sneaky/non-violent (Dishonored, Deus Ex, MGS (to an extent)).

 

[TaintedSaint]

Liked the first 2 but 3 ruined it for me. 30 min cut scenes. Kojima Stop making games if you want to make movies.

 

[The Wykydtron]

[HAAAAATE]

Have you ever played Revengeance? AKA the only good Metal Gear game? Sure the plot is still... Wonky at times (brains?) but it is good, or at least entertaining to watch and you really have to try to find the out of place sexy bits. The dialogue is actually good and significantly less long winded and the gameplay is amazing. Platinum Games prove to be the best thing ever yet again. You know how the last bits of any Metal Gear game is like an hour of the last boss talking at you before a fight? Revengeance does that too... and it's awesome

Yeah... I'm afraid you're talking to the wrong person.

I couldn't stand Revengeance and I despise everything remotely connected to Platinum Games (with the possible exception of Bayonetta which was undeniably fascinating in a what-the-fuck-am-I-looking-at kind of way) . I only played it because my housemate owned a copy.

It's ugly as sin with empty, soulless environments and enough grey to make a modern military shooter look vibrant by comparison. The animation is jerky and lacks any sense of weight or flow. The combat... eh, it wasn't horrible. Could even have been okay if the animation was any good. Liked the parrying mechanic. Would have liked it more if they'd explained it properly. The slice and dice thing looked cool in trailers but it turned out gimmicky in gameplay, essentially just a glorified finishing move that got old after the third time you see it.

As for the story stuff... well, let's just say that I couldn't tell if it was written by Kojima or by someone doing a really good imitation of Kojima. Best thing I can say about the cutscenes and dialogue was that they were relatively short.

Haha, what was I expecting? You're a guy who disliked Code Geass for being too melodramatic and camp how did I not see this response coming.

You think you're going to see a Platinum game release without glorified finishing moves? With the way the whole Blade Mode thing came about it's surprising that it actually released at all. Kojima basically did a tech demo on a cool little idea then realised he couldn't shove it into his usual Metal Gear games so he actually found some people who could deliver fully on this (really specific and kind of one trick) idea. A few other people would try to use the usual MGS team who have no idea how to do fancy blade graphics and physics and make a terrible botch job of it.

The finish thing is not a bad idea, it actually makes a lot of sense. They do it in most of their games, Bayonetta most notably. It's one of those cathartic things where this dick of a boss has been a dick for far too long so smash him in the face until your anger about him doing that one bullshit attack is over with then send him screaming to hell. Literally if you're playing Bayonetta.

Funnily enough, most people would agree that Revenangeance is too short. A METAL GEAR game. They go for some rival thing with Raiden and Sam and it almost, almost works. They needed 2 or 3 more missions to round it out and maybe make Monsoon have more than a cameo appearance before dying. He goes in, introduces himself, talks about lolcats, accidentally triggers Raiden's power up mode then gets fuckin' killed.

Also I suppose you won't agree with this but the music in Revenageance is fucking awesome. I wouldn't even be surprised if you could gauge someone's entire opinion on Reveangeance on how they reacted to the first 20 minutes.

"Throwing a robot into the sky then cutting it apart? Awesome! RULES OF NATURE!"

"Throwing a robot into the sky? That's fucking stupid. Don't even get me started on how jumping on missiles is even stupider"

I would say the parrying mechanic was easy but I play more fighting games so it must just come naturally to me. Did you play it on console I assume? They might have improved the frame rate for the PC version, I never felt like the animations were jerky. Seriously, 60+ frame rate triples how good games like this feel.

 

[COMaestro]

I had borrowed the original Metal Gear on NES from a friend back in elementary school, enjoyed what I played, but never finished it. I was never able to get the rocket launcher or whatever since I didn't take note of the radio frequency to contact Jennifer(?).

Ever since I played MGS on the Playstation, though, I've loved the series. The first was just a massive change in the videogame world in its gameplay and story. I loved the evolution in the gameplay presented in 2, though I was quite disappointed in the change of protagonists and the ending was pretty out there. 3 advanced the gameplay even further but had a more sensible story to go along with it. It was and is a masterpiece of gaming. I really enjoyed 4, though I hated seeing Snake as an old man and the story was rather convoluted. Portable Ops was a lot of fun, and I enjoyed what I played of Peace Walker, though I have not finished it.

Got Ground Zeroes last week and finding it to be wonderful. Though it's only one relatively small map, I keep playing the various ops finding different ways to accomplish my objectives and keep trying for a perfect run (haven't managed yet, though I was SO close on my last playthough). The gameplay has been streamlined and does not feel clunky like some past titles have (though I miss the ability to hold umpteen different weapons at once). I'm really looking forward to the Phantom Pain.

 

[generals3]

Personally i'm strongly on the love side. Although i can understand why some people may dislike it. Not everyone wants to go through more than 9 hours of cut scenes and dialogue when playing a game. But for me that's what makes MGS so interesting. There are so many shooters out there without any story worth anyone's time so having a game with a lot of emphasis on the story is refreshing.

But what i find really awesome about MGS is that not only does it have a great story which has everything (action, societal commentary, drama, looots of plot twists, humor,...) but the gameplay is also quite good and it also found a decent balance between stealth and shooting. (Yes i'm looking at you "Let's Spend the Whole Game Carrying Corpses Around" - Splinter Cell)

 

[Pikey Mikey]

I liked MGS2 (my brother owned it), i've seen Revengeance and it looks fine, hack'n'slashy. But what I really want to play is MGS3:Snake Eater. Something about that game... It just looks like a good and fun game. =)

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

I love the series, but with the caveat that I've only ever finished MGS2 [footnote]it was my first, and the gameplay is great even if the story is crazy and you don't like Raiden. Fortunately for me he was my introduction to the series, so the bait and switch with Snake didn't hurt so much.[/footnote], and I've only played significant parts of MGS1, Ghost Babel for the Gameboy Color (came very close to beating both of those before real life got in the way, they're on my "finish eventually" pile for sure), and I guess you can toss MGS3 on the list, even though I just got it a few months ago and haven't done much past the Virtuous Mission. I've also played bits of MG1 and 2 for the MSX, and the other MG 1 and 2 for the NES. Even the MSX originals were pretty good, especially Metal Gear 2. That was the one that most of the gameplay in both the first MGS and the Gameboy game came from, especially the gameboy game.

Haven't played 4 or Rising at all, and the only thing I've done with the PSP games is play a little bit of multiplayer with friends back in high school.

 

[Auron225]

I haven't played any of them, and so I have a question for those that have;

Which games do you recommend me playing to try it out? I tend to prefer starting at the beginning so I may well start with 1 if I can but I'm seeing a lot of hate for 2 and love for 3. Should I just skip 2 altogether or would I find it difficult to understand 3 if I did that?

In general, how do you recommend I go about it?

 

[Kopikatsu]

I haven't played any of them, and so I have a question for those that have;

Which games do you recommend me playing to try it out? I tend to prefer starting at the beginning so I may well start with 1 if I can but I'm seeing a lot of hate for 2 and love for 3. Should I just skip 2 altogether or would I find it difficult to understand 3 if I did that?

In general, how do you recommend I go about it?

3 follows the exploits of Big Boss in his prime, whereas he's the main antagonist in 1 and 2. There are a lot of references and characters connecting the games, but you won't really be missing anything vital by starting at 3, which takes place a good 35~ years before 1 or 2.

Most people hate 2 because the player character is Raiden (Of MG: Rising fame) instead of Solid. I don't think Jack is that bad though.

 

[Arslan Aladeen]

It's a series I enjoy a great deal, and given how popular it is, I gotta give respect to Kojima with the risks he takes with the series. Having said that, he needs to get an editor or someone to say 'no' once in a while to him. 45 minutes for a weapons dealer to say he'll deal weapons to me? What the hell? And personally, I prefer 1 and 3 over 4 & 2, and being a huge hack and slash guy, absolutely loved Revengeance which felt like a simultaneous homage and parody of the MGS franchise.

 

[Aluwolf]

Hands down the very best video game series I have ever played. Unlike most games the story is actually good and if you can comprehend past a grade school level the story isn't convoluted at all and makes perfect sense. It's a shame so many people in gaming fall into the "shut the hell up and let me play" category, but then wonder why the plot of their 60 dollar "aaa" game is garbage.

A good story can make a game playable for years.

Another thing I really like is how much of the game is based on real things.

Peacewalker actually exists, it's a soviet union project called Dead Hand that is designed to fire nukes at enemies without human input if it detects a nuke, you'd be amazed how much of the stuff you think can't exist actually does or did.

 

[Maximum Bert]

I loved/love Metal Gear solid that game is one of the best on the PSX I spent so long playing that and just messing about the VR missions were also great including the Special missions update they released later (never could do the very last one in that).

After that well I just never had that much fun with the franchise MGS2 wasnt fun for me and while MGS3 was better I didnt particularly like that much either.

I enjoyed Revengenace the controls are slick as hell which is what I have come to expect from Platinum but the camera was really bad and the gameplay just didnt have the same sense of tightness and satisfaction as Bayonetta to me oh and I disliked a lot of the boss battles in it I finished it twice and that was me done. I was happy to see the VR missions return but they were a mess ranging from ridiculously easy to you have to the stars have to align for you to be able to get the top rating hard. Its still my favourite Metal gear after MGS1 though.

I never played 4 but I am looking forward to the phantom pain will probably get ground zeroes when I have a PS4 and the game is 5 pounds or so.