It's only unfair if the other person does not call the piece in question one of the greatest works of the past 200 years.

I simply draw comparisons. He brings me Big Boss dialogue, I retaliate with Dickens. He gives me emotion, I give him a scene from Schindler's List. He gives me philosophy, I present the last ten minutes of 2001. He gives me humor, I roll back with The Scarlet Pimpernel. He gives me depth, I bow to War & Peace. Or maybe Magnolia. Or maybe Apocolypse Now... I could keep going on for days. 

It's not that difficult to see who is right here. I'm backing up my argument with works that are unchallenged by the best and brightest of the world and he brings back one professor who taught at a community college in Texas and never actually had the class approved.

It's funny that I didn't have to play Gears, DMC4, Dead Rising, Mass Effect, Super Mario Galaxy, etc etc etc. on hard to get a challenge out of the game.

But keep rocking that reasoning if it makes you feel better. In the meantime, I'll keep playing the shortbus MGS4.

...

Er, I mean "Solid Normal".

Ugh, I don't know about anyone else here, but I cringe whenever I see one of DTG's posts.

Seriously, there's only so much bullshit one can withstand before it begins to get really, really irritating.

Heh ... welcome to MGS series. If you like cutscenes this is the game for you. If not ... mmm ... you know ...

I try only MGS 2 and it was "too much cutscenes", so I will miss MGS4 too. I prefer to play games, not to watch them.
50%/50% lol.

 Are you likening Japanese storylines to the Australian wine industry about 20 years ago?

I give that post a 9.8.

Bzzzz. Read my comment again.

I'm playing on the hardest it lets me on the first playthrough. Still, by bad AI I don't mean 'weak' or 'easy'. I mean stupid. The rebels run straight up towards  the PMCs in the open. Any single decent move they make is clearly just scripted, and doesn't seem at all natural. Nobody uses cover effectively. The Rat Pack scene I mentioned specifically was full of silly bumping, allies sitting in open positions doing nothing, and terrible behavior in general.

There's more than 5 hours of gameplay.
I finished the game in 26 hours so personally I had 18 hours of gameplay if you count around 8 hours of cut scenes.

Now I am on my seond play through in hard mode ( Big Boss hard) and skipping every cut scenes and with no continue. I am closing on 3 hours and still in Act2

You can beat the game in 4-5 hours but you need to be a real pro ( required for the hardest emblem).

Yes, I have seen Apocalypse now though I'm not sure if it was the Redux version. However most of the dialogue minus the one with the French only lasted a couple of minutes until they moved on to the next scene. Like I said, name me a movie with a 1 hour scene similar to MGS2's devoted soley to the exploration of philosophical themes. The last 10 minutes of 2001 was extremely subtle and so I really can't consider it on level with MGS which lays it's philosophy out to you in words. School books and the education system rely directly on words and concise explanations to impart knowledge, if text books began being subtle implications of things they would be mostly useless in education. It's the most effective way of presenting knowledge and teaching someone.

Wait, you thought gears was challening on Normal? My god thats hilarious. SO many games are easier than they should be on normal which is why I generally choose close to the hardest, or the hardest difficult itself because the norm is easier than what I expect. You're most likely more skilled at games than most people which is why normal isn't good enough for you. Don't complain because "Normal" gave you a less than hard experience, what are you expecting?

Anyway, on topic I love games like this, they bring out so many different opinions and everyone is adamant theirs is right.

Ultimately, the later chapters are more for the real MGS fan as people have said; while people have complained, I LOVED the last few hours of the game, every minute of it, proposal scene and all because of everything that was happening around it.

People attack Kojima because he tries to throw a bit of a deeper meaning with his stories and doesn't quite reach the heights of Apocalypse Now? Oh well, guess he shouldn't bother then, let's go back to Halo shall we? THERE'S original story telling.

Bad art is the being told what the artist thinks. Good art grabs you by the shoulders and sticks you in the artists shoes.

Thats my take on things. Effective art isn't about being told something, but instead being given a different perspective, being made to question your own views and most of all understanding why the artist believes something. This is the reason why being told up front is such an ineffective way to get a point across - it doesn't involve the listener/viewer. Active interpretation is required of good art because it forces you to think and its this thinking that is key to the experience. From this a good artist can make you question just about anything or change your perspective on the whole world. But I'd say the most powerful aspect of art is how it can reveal an artist reasoning. Instead of just explaining why an artist is against something like fascism, a good artist can create a piece that leads you to conclude fascism is bad. Sure, you could just explain that point, but its so much more effective when you draw a person in and they can follow along to the same conclusion. Even if you don't agree with the result, you'll atleast have an understanding of the thoughts and logic leading up to such a claim, and thats something that is far deeper than anything words could communicate.

I'd like to expand this more but I'm short on time. Simply put I think art is the highest form of communication because it can say so many things words cannot - and thats why MGS fails; it relies on an inferior means of communication.