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Author Topic: Metal... GEAR?  (Read 133411 times)

Vector

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Re: Metal... GEAR?
« Reply #135 on: June 05, 2011, 07:30:40 am »

Honestly, dudes, if Rising is just a game about cutting things with smooth controls, that will almost be enough for me.  I'd like a real MGS game, but more than anything Rising just looks fun.  It's what Final Fantasy XIII wanted to be but couldn't figure out.

Disclaimer: haven't played FFXIII.  However, the stated desire for cinematic, player-controlled gameplay was clear enough, and the x-button tapping execution was also clear.


Aqizzar:

Yeah, I thought the second ending fell pretty flat.  On the one hand, the thematic elements Kojima managed to put into place were pretty impressive, and for me provided some food for thought.  Not the "taking it back to Zero crap," the impressive foiling between Snake and Sunny.  Snake seeing off both his mother and his father, in the same poses (at first), almost incapable of touching either of them... yeah, I was impressed with that, too.  I basically couldn't watch Zero's death, though I know next to nothing about the character.  Too horrible.  The injunction to continue living and stop fighting carried over well from the first game, but in the end I thought it felt very weak in comparison.

I have to say that the awkward stresses with Otacon's voice acting in this game were simply unacceptable.  Most of the VAs were very good, or at least okay.  He had a rather cute voice in the first game, and the second seems at least workable, if not good.  I'm not complaining about his emoting here because I honestly thought it worked.  Just the strange, unnatural emphases.

Also, the bit with the blue rose was bloody ridiculous.  A blue rose symbolizes a miracle... throwing that in the ending, as well as the "hurr, foxes pretending to be snakes" bit just made me facepalm.  I didn't even pay attention to most of the plotty exposition because I was too bored by that point =/


On the other hand, the implication that it is just too fucking late for Snake and Otacon was my preferred one.  Drebin's going to be okay; so are Raiden, Sunny, Meryl (all of whom have symbolically managed to recross the line from soldier to civilian/"human")... but for the people who started it and worked so hard to finish it off, there's no more time left.  Otacon is stuck in the system and never going to get out, too emotionally fragile despite everything.  Snake killed himself to keep himself from ever becoming a weapon again, fulfilling all of the statements that say both he and Liquid are going to have to die.  Snake doesn't even manage to give up on the cigarettes on his own willpower... in the end, both genes and memes are inescapable.  He isn't capable of any real change from the rut established by society; he has no meaningful control in the end.  All he can do is mature into the role provided.  The bit with the reversed eyepatch (which then blew up) as a symbol was particularly nice, in my opinion (even without having played MGS3, or knowing anything whatsoever about that game's plot).

Furthermore, the "Snake is a beast and will never turn into a prince" part was obvious in the first ending, and needed no explicit stressing.  The B&Bs provide interesting contrast.  They're insane, but that insanity is a shell over another self, another existence.  As we see from the foetal curling poses post-mortem, our damaged young women are essentially children who were arrested in their development.  Snake is "solid" emotionally but possesses no bifurcated identity, no illusion of himself capable of negotiating the world outside the system.

All the same, he has choices, and he makes them.

That the second ending pretended otherwise seems, to me, a bit of a cheap shot.  The first game gave us hope and freedom.  The last provided us with inevitability, responsibility, duty.  I personally thought that from a literary perspective, the entire damn thing--except that ending--was fucking brilliant.  Maybe not the underlying kudzu plot or the occasionally clunky dialogue, but like every mythological epic, there's always a bit of a weird underpinning (and I often suspected that Kojima was making fun and parodying as much as he was simply falling flat).  On a symbolic scale, every piece of it was prismatic in a way I hadn't anticipated from a video game.

And, you know, there was something very impressive about the way Kojima handled this fundamentally existentialist problem.  He opens with the specter of death, chaos, lack of control haunting the narrative, and answers it with the injunction to live, fearlessly, with honor.  He closes with that specter looming closer and closer, and shows us how to face it with dignity.  And, most importantly, he doesn't look away or flinch from the conclusion.  Snake is going to die.  He does die, alone, as all of us do.  Parentless, friendless, burned by the flames of war as both his parents were.

But only halfway.

I may be overanalyzing this, but man, I absolutely love existentialist narratives to death.  And symbolic ones.  And I love how this game presented itself.



As far as MGS2 goes, I'm at this point a little bit disappointed even by David Hayter :I  Also, I want to know what in the heck happened to Meiling, because Otacon clearly has no idea what he's doing.  On the other hand, the more casual and natural tone of their conversations at this point is refreshing.  They actually do sound like two guys who know each other well... in essence, they managed chemistry, which cheers me up because so often that tends to be lacking in voice acting.

I'm also going to add that the PC port apparently decided that the controls needed to be both extremely awkward and made of crap.  Lordy.  At least you can swap up the key configs.  Also, there is all kinds of rigamaro needed to make it run on Windows 7, but... well, maybe now I can stop dying in the first two minutes via invisible mook =/
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Vibhor

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Re: Metal... GEAR?
« Reply #136 on: June 05, 2011, 11:03:37 am »

Controls have always been awkward with the MGS series after the second one.
In the third one, it is quite difficult to pull off a leaning shot with an AK.
This leads to my question, How the fuck do I kill FEAR!
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Vherid

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Re: Metal... GEAR?
« Reply #137 on: June 05, 2011, 11:04:55 am »

Cant wait for the HD remakes to come out on the 360 so I can play all of them again, oh man.

Akura

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Re: Metal... GEAR?
« Reply #138 on: June 05, 2011, 11:07:06 am »

This leads to my question, How the fuck do I kill FEAR!
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
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Vibhor

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Re: Metal... GEAR?
« Reply #139 on: June 05, 2011, 11:20:55 am »

This leads to my question, How the fuck do I kill FEAR!
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Surprisingly I had an inventory full of shitty food and have not touched my game for weeks.
Gonna try this.
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Darvi

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Re: Metal... GEAR?
« Reply #140 on: June 05, 2011, 11:27:08 am »

I would've done that if I knew how to drop food and I forgot that I had thermal goggles. Still beat him though.
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Duke 2.0

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Re: Metal... GEAR?
« Reply #141 on: June 05, 2011, 11:29:41 am »

 I would just like to take the chance to point out that Drebin is a wizard and if he couldn't make a ton of money off of Snake would have likely just magiced his way into a happy ending.
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Vibhor

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Re: Metal... GEAR?
« Reply #142 on: June 05, 2011, 11:36:27 am »

I would've done that if I knew how to drop food and I forgot that I had thermal goggles. Still beat him though.

He was quite visible without thermal goggles. The only reason I couldn't see him was because I didn't had the time to look up.
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Vector

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Re: Metal... GEAR?
« Reply #143 on: June 05, 2011, 02:09:41 pm »

I would just like to take the chance to point out that Drebin is a wizard and if he couldn't make a ton of money off of Snake would have likely just magiced his way into a happy ending.

That's true.  Drebin was made of awesome.  I didn't like his monkey that much, but the character himself... yeah, he was smooth :D
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"The question of the usefulness of poetry arises only in periods of its decline, while in periods of its flowering, no one doubts its total uselessness." - Boris Pasternak

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MetalSlimeHunt

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Re: Metal... GEAR?
« Reply #144 on: June 05, 2011, 02:13:14 pm »

Drebin does mention that not everyone will be happy with the fall of the Patriots, so there's still the potential for future conflict. Then again, with JD and GW deleted, and the other AIs crippled, it might mean that all System'd guns and WMDs on Earth are permanently nonfunctioning, so that would at least halt the wars for a while.
« Last Edit: June 05, 2011, 02:22:07 pm by MetalSlimeHunt »
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Aqizzar

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Re: Metal... GEAR?
« Reply #145 on: June 05, 2011, 03:14:12 pm »

I would just like to take the chance to point out that Drebin is a wizard and if he couldn't make a ton of money off of Snake would have likely just magiced his way into a happy ending.

I still want to know how the Heck he got onto the Missouri.  At sea.  Does Drebin have a houseplane too?  I wonder if all the Drebins are as screwy and magic as that one is.  Of course, that would only work if they're all black...
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Vector

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Re: Metal... GEAR?
« Reply #146 on: June 05, 2011, 05:36:15 pm »

*sigh*

I actually find overhead view a lot easier to work with.  This camera is bloody annoying.

On the other hand, Snake's corset (and Otacon's mangled literary quotations) is causing me so much hilarity that I've forgiven all the things I dislike about this game thus far.  Like, for example, that it's become much, much harder for me to figure out where to go.
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"The question of the usefulness of poetry arises only in periods of its decline, while in periods of its flowering, no one doubts its total uselessness." - Boris Pasternak

nonbinary/genderfluid/genderqueer renegade mathematician and mafia subforum limpet. please avoid quoting me.

pronouns: prefer neutral ones, others are fine. height: 5'3".

Vector

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Re: Metal... GEAR?
« Reply #147 on: June 06, 2011, 06:13:07 pm »

Bumping for great justice and...

Metal Gear Solid Literary Analysis Fest!

If I find more good essays, I'll post 'em.  MGS2 and 4 for the awesome.
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"The question of the usefulness of poetry arises only in periods of its decline, while in periods of its flowering, no one doubts its total uselessness." - Boris Pasternak

nonbinary/genderfluid/genderqueer renegade mathematician and mafia subforum limpet. please avoid quoting me.

pronouns: prefer neutral ones, others are fine. height: 5'3".

hector13

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Re: Metal... GEAR?
« Reply #148 on: June 07, 2011, 12:38:15 am »

Have to say I'm very much into MGS3, what with the being able to interrogate the guards for information (and Jazz!) as well as the developement of Ocelot from poncey, meowing near-effiminate unpleasantness to zomgthisguyissocoollol.

MGS4 is also probably the only game that has made me cry. Or at least it would have, had I not been SCREWING MY SHOULDERS SPAMMING TRIANGLE (!)

Also

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It's sad that I can't really play the portable games, as I don't particularly want to, or can afford to, buy a PSP just to play those.  :-\
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Vibhor

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Re: Metal... GEAR?
« Reply #149 on: June 07, 2011, 01:01:00 am »

It's sad that I can't really play the portable games, as I don't particularly want to, or can afford to, buy a PSP just to play those.  :-\

Well cry no more!
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