View of MGS4 from a new PS3 owner, and not so big fan of the series...

[sieanr]

SlumsofOhio said:

rocketpig said:

Ail said:
MGS4 is really where gaming crosses to movies but still make you feel like you are the one on screen directing the story.

I couldn't disagree more. MGS4 is a game that wants to be a movie. Mass Effect is a game that truly crosses the movie/game boundaries. It gives you choice, gives you immersion, and involves the character with a cinematic outcome.

MGS, on the other hand, is a game that makes you sit through long cutscenes, removes the player from the action, and does little other than haphazardly mix cinema and gaming.

Don't get me wrong, overall I really like MGS4. It presents amazing production values, great gameplay, and an overall polish rarely seen in gaming. The game just oozes detail.

But let's not confuse things. It has overly detailed cutscenes that linger well past their welcome, the dialogue is terrible, Hayter is still a wretched voice actor, and Kojima is still participating in directorial masturbation far too often. The game is seriously flawed.

If this game was cut down to 15 hours (average playthrough, I think I'll hit that as is), if Kojima stopped treating his audience like children and instead played up his strong points (the egg scenes, the random intro sections, etc.), and if he focused on telling the actual story in game, this would be a vastly superior experience.

Frankly, I hate being told the same thing over and over again. That's why Kojima is a shitty storyteller. I got it the first time, thanks. A little subtlety would be nice. I don't need someone to feed me everything like I'm a fourth grader who still sucks from my mother's teet. 

I think that is MGS4's main flaw. The gameplay decreases as you progress. The first act was well balanced, but, after that it becomes clear that Kojima couldn't contain himself, and threw in cutscenes that were either way too long, or contained worthless dialouge. The cutscenes near the end get worse, trust me.

But, I personally like the Mission Briefing scenes (well some of them).

I didn't mind the cutscenes in Act 1 too much, except for the couple of short cutscenes during the frog battle that showed you what was happening DIRECTLY in front of you. There is no reason that they couldn't have shown the exact same thing in-game, but instead they do a cutscene that takes you out of battle and kills the flow of gameplay. But for the most part the cutscenes could be cut down significantly and still have their meaning intact. Hell, it would probably increase their impact as well since it cuts straight to the point.

One thing that was an absolute killer was going from Act 1 to Act 2. It took a somewhere over 35min from the time you stop play 1, to the time when the game gives you the privilege of playing again. So far I'm midway through Act 2 and my feelings are mixed. On the one hand I love the graphics and art direction of this level, which is vastly superior to the ho-hum generic middle east setting of Act 1 - even though this environment is just as generic. But the cutscene heavy story telling is only getting worse. One the one hand I like the gameplay here better than 1, although its far more linear than 1. 

Oh, and one last thing that really pissed me off. When you first take control of snake, and I'm talking right at the beginning, you have to crawl under that truck. Well, instead of getting right into the sneaking I took some time to screw around with the controls and control options. Anyways after a minute or two of doing that I heard Otacon say "Snak, you have to crawl under the truck". Then Snake did crawl under the truck despite the fact that I wasn't actually controlling him and trying to crawl in the opposite direction. As though this game didn't feel like Kojima controlling everything already he decides to take control when I'm doing something with his character that I shouldn't be doing. Great way to start the game.