Forum Overview :: Reviews :: Re: I think it's about time the industry admitted

[quote name="FABIO"][quote name="Eyo"]I don't think BG&E was great as a stealth game. It was great as a game, though. The "stealth" sections were pretty much just pattern-memorization,[/quote] From my experience before I quit for the a second time, that's pretty much what MGS3 is also. Without knowing exactly where all the guards are beforehand, you're going to be discovered by some guard who spots you through tiny cracks in a wall from 100 feet away (and who you have no chance of spotting without hiding for an hour and observing). I use the same routine I did with Siren: first time in an area I just run straight through it drawing out every guard and noting where they for next time. Without doing this, the game mimics Siren again with the fact that you have to hide and spend way too much time observation patrols patterns in 1st person mode. [quote]PSIops, while having some really dodgy AI spotting you wherever you were, nailed that. You were stealthy because you WANTED those brainpops. You <i>wanted</i> to pull off these super-badass scanners-moves. But if you somehow got spotted, you had a fantastic physics-driven arsenal of "ordinary" ways to maim anyone who got in your way. That's the kind of stealth i enjoy. The kind that's a disposable approach that's shed like so much snakeskin whenever someone actually punches the alarm, and it's hard, awesome combat until everyone who knows you're even there lies strewn on the floor with broken necks and shot-out brains. [/quote] It's really a shame because there are a bunch of tiny little amusing details in the metal gear games. Stuff like shooting seaguls and looking up that hostage chick's skirt in MGS2 and getting scolded by the colonel and rose for it. MGS3 you can throw stuff through the window into Sokolov's room and he'll scream. The problem is the game gives you no room to have fun with these things. Every second you're not crawling (this game forces you to crawl the entire time, yet exiting out of the crawl stance is a pain. Hit X once to kneel, then hit it again to stand. If you move the stick at all while kneelling you go right back to crawling. Makes switching between them a complete pain when you're in a hurry) through grass with >80% camo there's a good chance you'll be spotted by some cheap ass enemy you couldn't even see, and that means resetting your game. Or if you are discovered, you quickly realize you can just run straight towards your objective right passed all the guards, and you'll have a good chance of making it to the next objective or ctuscene that will automatically cancle the alert. This is how I got past the first area. But then the game seems to realize that this is the easiest way to do things, so it <i>forces</i> you to be stealthy by often making it so you can't reach your objective if the alert is on. In that case you'll <i>have</i> to reset or hope there's some sort of large crawlspace to hide in, because you certainly can't hide with camo during an alert. The 3+ minute alert mode and impossibility of hiding once you're discovered are the two main things that completely kill the fun in this game. On normal mode, this game is more frustrating than Ninja Gaiden since you're either always crawling or jamming the reset button. The whole thing is barely more tolarable than Siren, mostly thanks to the attention to detail. Game Informer gave this game a 9.75/10, with a bold highlighted quote of "To anyone who claims that Metal Gear is all cinematics and not about gameplay - you are an idiot". So far in my first 2 hours I've crawled through 3 screens (6 if you count the fact you have to do them twice) and the rest has been cutscenes and radio conversations about retarded conspiracy theories, record breaking gay gimmick enemies, old movies (which you'll get an earful of everytime you just want to save the fucking game), the superiority of all things Japan, and how you have to carry an emotion into battle if you want to survive (I'm guessing Snake won't be able to beat the boss until he finds his emotion, which will turn out to be LOVE). I went back and loaded up an old save in MGS1, and immediately I was having fun and giggling while running circles behind guards' backs, slapping C4 on the back of the peeing guard, basking in the fact that I have to wait less than a minute for the alert timer to run down, actually being able to SNEAK despite the fact that I can only see 15 feet in front of me because I have a helpful radar, bosses that mostly stayed in the realm of not-retarded, and fun fights with said bosses being spaced out evenly instead of making me wait untold hours. Than I went back to Psi-ops and had even more fun. Metal Gear is riding on nothing but brand name and nostalgic expectations now.[/quote]