Why did some people not enjoy MGS4?

[mcx]

I have not played MGS4 but it seems that the game does not encourage you to sneak since you can just gun down everybody with out a problem.

The Thief games almost forced you to sneak since you were pretty much useless in combat, sure you could go Rambo and try to fence all the gurds but then you would just get owned by a giant Zombie Monster/Robot.

 

[Doug]

MGS4 requires two things...

1: You have played the prequels.

2: The ability of the player to comprehend complex ideas and piece the story together.

Most players do not possess both of these things and, therefore, do not enjoy the game.

And a desire to sit through hours and hours of unnecessary dialog rather than play a game (like its meant to be!)

 

[anti_strunt]

With MGS4 Kojima had to tie of all the loose ends of the story. How else would he be able to finish it. He kind of squashed everything into MGS4 thats why it turned into what it is.

-and whose fault is that there were so many loose ends in the first place, many of them tangential, irrelevant or plain uninteresting? "Everything, including the kitchen sink" is not stellar story-telling in my book.

I thought it was a solid story. It's like when people complained about the matrix all over again!

I wouldn?t use any word synonymically related to the concept of "tightness" to describe the MGS story...

Anyway: one interesting idea would be for Mr. K to make, not a sequel, but one "united" game, tying together the best elements of the different stories to tell whatever collective tale of duty and militarism he wanted to tell, only in a more coherent and thematically focused manner, without all the interminable sidetracking and irrelevant subplots. Once you cut that out, a trimmed version of the main story could probably easily fit into an MGS4-length game, whilst remaining suitably "epic". Leaving gameplay aside, I think that would make for a more interesting narrative, hypothetically speaking, of course.

He tried to with Zone of enders. But he failed.

Considering he made a sequel, something clearly went wrong...

 

[Stewie Plisken]

The Thief games almost forced you to sneak since you were pretty much useless in combat, sure you could go Rambo and try to fence all the gurds but then you would just get owned by a giant Zombie Monster/Robot.

You could? I made the mistake to piss of a couple of guards once and I was running around the level throwing flash bangs for two minutes straight.

I'm personally split on MGS4's attempt to leave the gaming style up to the player. On one hand, it's probably good, because it adds to the replayability value. On the other hand, maybe giving action a bigger piece of the pie has offered a relatively unneeded range of options that can drag you with them. Why use the magazines, if I can just use the Mk .22 (an issue that goes aaaall the way back to MGS2, mind you).

Of course, that is only for levels up to Normal. In Hard and Extreme, shootouts aren't really that much of an option. Not a wise one, anyway.

 

[notyouraveragejoe]

To be perfectly honest I thought that MGS4 was quite boring. It wasn't just the cutscenes, although they were quite annoying, but the whole thing. I found it to be a boring game. Further more I found that going into a menu to do stuff (camouflage and stuff), if I remember thats how it worked, was quite clunky and awkward.

This was bizarre since I quite like stealth games. Although i admit I am a "newbie" to the series so that might be the cause of me disliking it. Finally the story was quite complicated.

Edit: To whoever said that it was "too epic for the stupids to like." I feel rather insulted. I consider myself of above average intelligence (yet I'm not a smartass about it, I'm only saying it here once). The plot was ridiculously convulted and the cutscenes would have been bearable if they were in anyway interactive. I like playing my games. As in playing, playing. I also like stories in games. When a game doesn't do the former enough and has a pointlessly complicated plot it stops interesting me.

 

[TheButtonMashEffect]

To be perfectly honest I thought that MGS4 was quite boring. It wasn't just the cutscenes, although they were quite annoying, but the whole thing. I found it to be a boring game. Further more I found that going into a menu to do stuff (camouflage and stuff), if I remember thats how it worked, was quite clunky and awkward.

This was bizarre since I quite like stealth games. Although i admit I am a "newbie" to the series so that might be the cause of me disliking it. Finally the story was quite complicated.

Edit: To whoever said that it was "too epic for the stupids to like." I feel rather insulted. I consider myself of above average intelligence (yet I'm not a smartass about it, I'm only saying it here once). The plot was ridiculously convulted and the cutscenes would have been bearable if they were in anyway interactive. I like playing my games. As in playing, playing. I also like stories in games. When a game doesn't do the former enough and has a pointlessly complicated plot it stops interesting me.

Everybody sounds like Yahtzee. lol

 

[Ionami]

A. it has enough cutscenes to be a short movie,

It has like 8 hours of cutscenes. What short movie have you watched that's 8 hours long?

It's no where near 8 hours at all

Did you play the game and watch through all the cutscenes? The ending movie alone is 1 hour 30 mins. Besides, a short film is approximately 45 mins or less. Are you trying to tell me that there is 45 mins or less worth of cutscenes in MGS4? If so, then you sir, are clearly on drugs.

 

[Uncompetative]

LocoRoco was better.

 

[TheButtonMashEffect]

A. it has enough cutscenes to be a short movie,

It has like 8 hours of cutscenes. What short movie have you watched that's 8 hours long?

It's no where near 8 hours at all

Did you play the game and watch through all the cutscenes? The ending movie alone is 1 hour 30 mins. Besides, a short film is approximately 45 mins or less. Are you trying to tell me that there is 45 mins or less worth of cutscenes in MGS4? If so, then you sir, are clearly on drugs.

Did not say anything about it being shorter than 45 mins or anything i just said that it was no where near 8 hours of cutscenes and yes i have three times! So you go play it again time the cutscenes and then come back to me.

LocoRoco was better.

LocoRoco is the best game ever. lol. Hence RaRaLoco

 

[Ionami]

A. it has enough cutscenes to be a short movie,

It has like 8 hours of cutscenes. What short movie have you watched that's 8 hours long?

It's no where near 8 hours at all

Did you play the game and watch through all the cutscenes? The ending movie alone is 1 hour 30 mins. Besides, a short film is approximately 45 mins or less. Are you trying to tell me that there is 45 mins or less worth of cutscenes in MGS4? If so, then you sir, are clearly on drugs.

Did not say anything about it being shorter than 45 mins or anything i just said that it was no where near 8 hours of cutscenes and yes i have three times! So you go play it again time the cutscenes and then come back to me.

Either you're being willfully ignorant, or you have no sense of time at all.

"The total length of MGS4's cutscenes are 9 hours and 50 minutes." I found someone who had already timed them. So not only are you dead wrong, it's even more than 8 hours.

 

[TheButtonMashEffect]

A. it has enough cutscenes to be a short movie,

It has like 8 hours of cutscenes. What short movie have you watched that's 8 hours long?

It's no where near 8 hours at all

Did you play the game and watch through all the cutscenes? The ending movie alone is 1 hour 30 mins. Besides, a short film is approximately 45 mins or less. Are you trying to tell me that there is 45 mins or less worth of cutscenes in MGS4? If so, then you sir, are clearly on drugs.

Did not say anything about it being shorter than 45 mins or anything i just said that it was no where near 8 hours of cutscenes and yes i have three times! So you go play it again time the cutscenes and then come back to me.

Either you're being willfully ignorant, or you have no sense of time at all.

"The total length of MGS4's cutscenes are 9 hours and 50 minutes." I found someone who had already timed them. So not only are you dead wrong, it's even more than 8 hours.

Really? Well i stand corrected. I must have been enjoying it alot then. Ok so if it is 9 hours long it really does'nt feel like it all when your playing. Well it depends if your totally immersed in it then it flies by. I suppose the people are complaining about the cutscenes they noticed.

 

[Axolotl]

It wasn't stealthy enough? Probably because they ran through the levels with a gun.

Also if they think it's too easy: there are more difficulty settings.

The person who complained it was too easy (he played it on the hardest difficulty) primarily plays MGS2 and MGS3 on European Extreme setting himself extra targets like not killing people or only using CQC. So I'm not sure how difficult it is for most people.

 

[CF105]

The reason I didn't like MGS4 was mostly the freaking controls and sheer linear style of gameplay (albeit as I'm currently playing through FFVII for the first time I'm realizing I just don't like slow-paced linear games). Take the first mission, to get where you need to go, you have three choices, thats it. Right path, left path or right up the middle. No tactics, just how long can you wait until the PMC walk by. No real attempts at tactics. Just three choices.

As for the story being groundbreaking, deep and artistic? This is my first MGS game but quite frankly, its jank. You want to analyse political tensions and pmcs in the middle east, go for it. Propogation of biological and chemical weapons sure. Just keep it at that and don't freaking drag the rest of the supposed "deep" game world along with you.

My favourite linear gameplay style game is Hordes of the Underdark, it keeps you distracted from the boring story by functionally throwing everything in the Underdark arsenal of monsters at you and giving you fast simple rewarding objectives. Not drawing everything into a half hour cutscene that takes longer to watch then to actually get to that point in the level.

As for the political considerations of the game, I'm also playing FarCry 2 right now and if you let it the game will just take you in to the point where you want to kill everyone on both sides of the war just to get them to start hunting you as opposed to killing each other. I just didn't care about any of the political considerations of the game it just makes me shrug my shoulders.

So theres my opinion on MGS4

 

[Ionami]

A. it has enough cut scenes to be a short movie,

It has like 8 hours of cut scenes. What short movie have you watched that's 8 hours long?

It's no where near 8 hours at all

Did you play the game and watch through all the cut scenes? The ending movie alone is 1 hour 30 mins. Besides, a short film is approximately 45 mins or less. Are you trying to tell me that there is 45 mins or less worth of cut scenes in MGS4? If so, then you sir, are clearly on drugs.

Did not say anything about it being shorter than 45 mins or anything i just said that it was no where near 8 hours of cut scenes and yes i have three times! So you go play it again time the cut scenes and then come back to me.

Either you're being willfully ignorant, or you have no sense of time at all.

"The total length of MGS4's cut scenes are 9 hours and 50 minutes." I found someone who had already timed them. So not only are you dead wrong, it's even more than 8 hours.

Really? Well i stand corrected. I must have been enjoying it a lot then. Ok so if it is 9 hours long it really doesn't feel like it all when your playing. Well it depends if your totally immersed in it then it flies by. I suppose the people are complaining about the cut scenes they noticed.

Perhaps. I can say that I only watched the majority of the cut scenes once, (Usually I'll watch the action packed ones every play through.) simply because the others were so convoluted it was hard to understand what they were talking about half the time. And some of them were just plain boring, let's be honest. And I say that being a die-hard MGS fan. I own all of the games, and love them all. (Even MGS2) But MGS4 had some incredibly boring cut scenes at points.

 

[TheButtonMashEffect]

Yes some parts did drag on, but it helped the story along. Scenes like the boat scene with Liquid in the canal are truely epic in every way.

 

[shmaller]

I bet it's just because of the deep storyline. You really need to have played the first three to get the full experience. That said, I found the transition from stealth to third-person shooter uncomfortable and foreign. That said, I absolutely loved the game.

 

[nathan-dts]

He is an old man in a skin tigh suit, its made in japan, [/B]the story is crap, and why is he called "Solid Snake" on the japanies could make such a complex series.

What? WHAT!? Also your last comment seems a tad racist.

 

[nathan-dts]

I bet it's just because of the deep storyline. You really need to have played the first three to get the full experience. That said, I found the transition from stealth to third-person shooter uncomfortable and foreign. That said, I absolutely loved the game.

Agreed. I enjoyed the game but it wasn't Metal Gear; there was absolutely no stealth.

 

[Gimelbub]

I didn't enjoy it because it was more or less a fifty dollar movie.

 

[Laughing Man]

Indifference is my overall opinion of the game. Everything up to and including the battle between Metal Gear Rex and Metal Gear Ray was great. I had no issue with the sometimes long cutscenes but everything after that battle was idiocy in the extreme.

Stealth was thrown out of the window and it then became a run and gun affair which is all well and good for a game that has that as its core design aspect but MGS's control system just did not work well for that kind of gameplay. The final sections of the game were tedious as well. The section were Snake is crawling through the defense corrider to get to the AI is rubbish, cinematic yes, but as a gameplay element sitting there button mashing isn't a fun thing to do and the final battle between Snake and Ocelot suffers the same flaw as the run and gun section, i.e MSG isn't a one on one beat em up and as such the controls for it sucked ass. Finally the hour and however long final cut scene worked right up until Snake seemed to shot himself. Then for some reason it was felt that EVERY single element of the MGS world had to be tied up in a neat little package.

MGS4 was great game just the last hour of gameplay and the last two hours of cut scenes ruined it.