Yes, it was a complete midfuck but in a brilliant way. It was surreal in the way all of the main characters gathered together at the end of the game, giving their various perspectives on everything that happened up until that point. And trying to piece the truth together from everything said was rewarding when you finally understoof everything. It also served as a great moment where after focusing purely on the storyline in the rest of the game there was an hour focusing on the themes.

 Who defines good storytelling?  Also, it depends on whether you consider MGS a story first or a philosophical journey first. I think the storyline is there simply to frame Kojima's messages and philosophy and not the other way around making the philosophy integral to MGS. As such it should be explained in-depthly, because simply touching upon like Deus Ex did doesn't accomplish a goal of being a truly enlightening experience. The storyline is simply there to make the experience more entertaining and easier to digest.

What else could we expect if the magazine is a 'casual' magazine? Taking that into account, 92 is a great score.

Story too complex? Yay! Sounds much better than MGS3 (which was excellent as well but lost to MGS2). Although the story may be complex, I believe it's still not as complex as MGS2's. After all, MGS4 is supposed to explain. And personally I loved MGS2's story. It sucked me into it but I still got time to play. Also, I liked its complexity.

Boss fights? Hard to tell from that kind of a description. Shooting is supposedly pretty simple yet boss fights are too complex and have too much shooting. Guess there's something to it... Well, I guess it's not too bad either.

Not bad, not bad. I would've prefered a better score but it's more of a casual magazine after all. It seems they gave Halo 3 'only' 87.

Sorry, under any definition, good storytelling is not stopping and ramming philosophy down people's throat. That's not even good philosophical storytelling. Good philosophical storytelling interweaves it deas throughout, usbtely leting them come to the surface. MGS2 simply has characters say something about philosophy. (And how it's story beign so twisty and ridiculous makes it postmodern I have no idea. I think too many people actually have no idea what postmodern really means but thrw around that word anyway) It's similar to The Matrix--philospohy for dummies. Telling you exactly how this philosophy fits into this story, while dumbing down the philosophy as much as hunamly possible. You want to read real, good, philospohical writing, read Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson. Or good postmodern writing: Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon.

Hell, the only video game I've seen that can lay claim to being subtley philospohical is Shadow of the Colossus. It's almost a Shintoist parable. And of course it did it through the simplist story possible, which is usually the best way to get a point accross.

MGS2 may have been a great game, but the story was ridiculous and the philosophy tacked on in the worst way possible. Having a great story is not the same as having a whole lot of story. 

I wonder if they have ever reviewed Xenogears, if they already call Metal Gear 4's story too complex..

I would rather have an entertaining story than a complex one.

Too often people forget those are not necessarily the same things. 

Great news, just what I was hoping for. I thought mgs2 was a perfect game. It looks like mgs4 will be as well.

I'll give a quarter to anyone who can spot MGS2's crappy presentation: http://vgchartz.com/forum/post.php?id=660347

Raiden: Who are you?

Colonel: To begin with -- we're not what you'd call -- human. Over the past two hundred years -- A kind of consciousness formed layer by layer in the crucible of the White House. It's not unlike the way life started in the oceans four billion years ago. The White House was our primordial soup, a base of evolution -- We are formless. We are the very discipline and morality that Americans invoke so often. How can anyone hope to eliminate us? As long as this nation exists, so will we.

Raiden: Cut the crap! If you're immortal, why would you take away individual freedoms and censor the Net?

Rose: Jack, don't be silly.

Colonel: Don't you know that our plans have your interests -- not ours -- in mind?

Raiden: What?

Rose: Jack, listen carefully like a good boy!

Colonel: The mapping of the human genome was completed early this century. As a result, the evolutionary log of the human race lay open to us.

Rose: We started with genetic engineering, and in the end, we succeeded in digitizing life itself.

Colonel: But there are things not covered by genetic information.

Raiden: What do you mean?

Colonel: Human memories, ideas. Culture. History.

Rose: Genes don't contain any record of human history.

Colonel: Is it something that should not be passed on? Should that information be left at the mercy of nature?

Rose: We've always kept records of our lives. Through words, pictures, symbols... from tablets to books... (Colonel/Rose already explained this 3 lines ago...)

Colonel: But not all the information was inherited by later generations. A small percentage of the whole was selected and processed, then passed on. Not unlike genes, really.

Rose: That's what history is, Jack.

Colonel: But in the current, digitized world, trivial information is accumulating every second, preserved in all its triteness. Never fading, always accessible.

Rose: Rumors about petty issues, misinterpretations, slander...

Colonel: All this junk data preserved in an unfiltered state, growing at an alarming rate.

Rose: It will only slow down social progress, reduce the rate of evolution.

Colonel: Raiden, you seem to think that our plan is one of censorship.

Raiden: Are you telling me it's not!?

Rose: You're being silly! What we propose to do is not to control content, but to create context.

Raiden: Create context?

Colonel: The digital society furthers human flaws and selectively rewards development of convenient half-truths. Just look at the strange juxtapositions of morality around you.

Rose: Billions spent on new weapons in order to humanely murder other humans.

Colonel: Rights of criminals are given more respect than the privacy of their victims.

Rose: Although there are people suffering in poverty, huge donations are made to protect endangered species. Everyone grows up being told the same thing.

Colonel: Be nice to other people.

Rose: But beat out the competition!

Colonel: "You're special." "Believe in yourself and you will succeed."

Rose: But it's obvious from the start that only a few can succeed... (5th 'but' in a row, well done! I guess it's hard to EXPLAIN EVERYTHING through dialogs!)

Colonel: You exercise your right to "freedom" and this is the result. All rhetoric to avoid conflict and protect each other from hurt. The untested truths spun by different interests continue to churn and accumulate in the sandbox of political correctness and value systems.

Rose: Everyone withdraws into their own small gated community, afraid of a larger forum. They stay inside their little ponds, leaking whatever "truth" suits them into the growing cesspool of society at large.

Colonel: The different cardinal truths neither clash nor mesh. No one is invalidated, but nobody is right.

Rose: Not even natural selection can take place here. The world is being engulfed in "truth."

Colonel: And this is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but a whimper.

Rose: We're trying to stop that from happening.

Colonel: It's our responsibility as rulers. Just as in genetics, unnecessary information and memory must be filtered out to stimulate the evolution of the species.

Raiden: And you think you're qualified to decide what's necessary and not!?

(...)
I stopped marking half-way the arrogant and self-conceited writing from Kojima, too much to bare.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For a comparison here's a scene from the vastly superior writing of Deus Ex:

Morpheus: JC Denton. 23 years old. No residence. No ancestors. No employer. No–
JC: How do you know who I am?
Morpheus: I must greet each visitor with a complete summary of his file. I am a prototype for a much larger system.
JC: What else do you know about me?
Morpheus: Everything that can be known.
JC: Go on. Do you have proof about my ancestors?
Morpheus: You are a planned organism, the offspring of knowledge and imagination rather than of individuals.
JC: I’m engineered. So what? My brother and I suspected as much while we were growing up.
Morpheus: You are carefully watched by many people. The unplanned organism is a question asked by Nature and answered by death. You are another kind of question with another kind of answer.
JC: Are you programmed to invent riddles?
Morpheus: I am a prototype for a much larger system. The heuristics language developed by Dr. Everett allows me to convey the highest and most succinct tier of any pyramidal construct of knowledge.
JC: How about a report on yourself?
Morpheus: I was a prototype for Echelon IV. My instructions are to amuse visitors with information about themselves.
JC: I don’t see anything amusing about spying on people.
Morpheus: Human beings feel pleasure when they are watched. I have recorded their smiles as I tell them who they are.
JC: Some people just don’t understand the dangers of indiscriminate surveillance.
Morpheus: The need to be observed and understood was once satisfied by God. Now we can implement the same functionality with data-mining algorithms.
JC: Electronic surveillance hardly inspires reverence. Perhaps fear and obedience, but not reverence.
Morpheus: God and the gods were apparitions of observation, judgment, and punishment. Other sentiments toward them were secondary.
JC: No one will ever worship a software entity peering at them through a camera.
Morpheus: The human organism always worships. First it was the gods, then it was fame (the observation and judgment of others), next it will be the self-aware systems you have built to realize truly omnipresent observation and judgment.
JC: You underestimate humankind’s love of freedom.
Morpheus: The individual desires judgment. Without that desire, the cohesion of groups is impossible, and so is civilization.

There are a few more remarks that happen if you try to engage Morpheus in conversation further, but no further real dialogues are launched:

Morpheus: The human being created civilization not because of a willingness but because of a need to be assimilated into higher orders of structure and meaning.

This one is probably the most-quoted line in Deus Ex: http://vgchartz.com/forum/post.php?id=661024

Morpheus: God was a dream of good government."

http://www.acroyear2.org/2007/11/24/a-small-snippet-of-deus-ex/

See in Deus Ex how naturally the conversation flows into the theme pretended?

Deus Ex >>> MGS2

"-boss fights too complex/too much shooting"

.....................
They gave GeOW and Halo3 a 91 and 87, these guys are noobs that can't handle heavy action. The point that they are "only for casual gamers" is suspect enough. Disregarded, nuff said.