Metal Gear Solid series.

[RandomAct]

So I've somewhat come around on this game a bit.  The missions all feel exactly the same, BUT I am enjoying the gameplay alot more now that I've gotten decent at it.  Got a question.  Does your squad level up during the game?  So if someone is rated like, a C in intel, will he eventually level up to a B?

[Jiji]

*Resurrection powerz*

I finally beat Phantom Pain and its weird two chapter system. I'm not going to bother doing all the missions they pile on that are just revisits but with more difficult parameters. I thought the ending reveal was really neat. A lot of the narrative intricacies went over my head as I haven't gone back to play the original trilogy in years, so I'm guessing there were a lot of clues regarding the secret on the way to the reveal (other than the bandaged man in the hospital having, you know, Snake's voice). I do have the PS3 collection and was playing Metal Gear a while back trying to go through them prior to really diving into this. I failed then. Maybe I'll do a speed run of those original games now.

I think not playing Peace Walker also fucked with my ability to make an already obfuscated Hideo Kojima story even more incomprehensible at times. I appreciated the lack of 20+ minute cut scenes until much later into the game though. 

How would you all rank the series? Before replaying them (though I've beaten the original trilogy at least a few times), I'd probably go something like this:

1. 1
2. 3: Snake Eater
3. 4: Guns of the Patriots
4. V: Phantom Pain
5. 2: Sons of Liberty (I really enjoyed quite a bit of the gameplay but the story was a bit much and Raiden is a bitch)
6. Revengeance I guess. Didn't really care for it.

All in all, I sunk something like 140 hours into V (my life?!). Apparently I could whip through the PS3 collection almost twice in that time. There was way too much grinding and repetitious side ops for this to be an all-time classic; but even a "really good not great" Metal Gear game is better than most others in my opinion. Loved all the tie-ins with "The Man Who Sold The World" at the end. Quiet was a really neat character aside from the gratuitous sexism. The initial (and final) hospital scene is a masterpiece.

Last thought: did anybody else want to slap the taste out of li'l Liquid Snake's mouth? Fucking shit.

[Lamp, broken circa 1988]

i know i swear I'm not a contrarian, but this is gonna make it hard for me to not look like it

1. Sons of Liberty. I appreciate that Kojima went to that much effort to make his fans choke on their short-sighted fantasies of how cool of a scenario secret nuclear war robots would be. Gameplay is unremarkable, but the malice is delightful. Plus, the expectations that followed the heavy manipulation of this game kind of tainted the fourth wall stuff of all the other games. I think time's been kindest to the spirit of this game versus the others- while I have friends that like MGS when they're reminded they like MGS specifically, but MGS2 surges in everyone's minds when other games make a run at the fourth wall. There's a power there.

2. Revengeance. It's a block party celebration of all of Kojima's worst tendencies, thus making it the most honestly fun Metal Gear. The gameplay is designed by one of the best 3D Action Studios. It is also, as a bonus, probably the second best Sonic The Hedgehog game too.

3. MGS1. This is probably here because of my weakness of spy stuff and heist stuff, but MAN, I'm here for it. It's easy to see how a mythos grew so fast, and also easy to see why Kojima would try desperately to destory that mythos before it enveloped his entire career at Konami. Which it then did.

the next three are kind of interchangable to me, but here's how I'd rank them right now

4. Guns of the Patriots. This has my favorite memory of playing it- my best friend and I got it the friday after it came out. We then holed up inside his house, disconnected his PC from the internet, and we just played through it for two days so we could see all the shit and not get spoiled.

5. The Phantom Pain. While it has a good amount of Kojima Hates You, it's a little late, and it got corrupted by the Microtransaction Crone that lives inside Konami. This is probably the best playing action game of the series. I, uh, don't know how much value I put in that.

6. Snake Eater. While I loved screaming "SNAKE EATERRRR" at aforementioned best friend for the years after that ladder sequence pissed him off, I've found that this game is kind of brutal to go back to. I appreciate the ambition, but like I was never able to shake the feeling that "make a metal gear that plays good" felt like giving in to the pressure of the market. Like, the legend of Kojima lives in the worst playing games.

[Raziel]

Well, I never played Peace Walker, or any of the V's (they're on my list and should probably pick up the PS3 versions since they're dirt cheap) so I'm missing those, but...

 

1. Snake Eater - This sits at my top, although playing the Substinence version (which comes in the PS3 collection) makes the game less rough because Substinence has better camera angles which takes away the constant need for 1st person view that the original release had.  It's the whole 60's cold war vibe, soundtrack, addition of CQC, inventory management and camo changes.  The only real bear is the escort segment toward the end, which is a fucking chore, but it takes up so little of the game that the rest of the game more than makes up for it.  I could live without the food stuff, but it worked over all.

2. Solid - The original is great, loved the story and it pretty much set the stage for everything else.  Music was great, and the Sniper Wolf death scene is still one of my favorite scenes in a game, and the tower climb remains a great sequence.

3. Guns - I loved 4, but it had its issues.  Little too long on the cut scenes, the Drebin Shop kinda tossed inventory management out the window, especially in Act 5 where the prices droped dramatically.  The concepts in it were solid and it was a fitting end of the story, and the microwave sequence and final boss fight were outstanding.  But some of the execution was lacking and the difficulty ramp in Act 4 because of the arm robots was a little out there.

4. Sons - Just because 2 is at the bottom doesn't mean I hated it. I liked it and played the shit out of the game, but the 4th wall stuff BL talked about hurt the best sequence and it didn't have the memorable boss fights that the rest of the series had, and actually had the weakest.  Yeah, I get that the game was supposed to be structured similar to 1 on purpose, but the Boss fights didn't live up to it, and the Snake/Raiden vs. the Horde of guards in the ladder room was hurt by the 4th wall stuff, unlike in 1 where the 4th wall stuff helped the Psycho Mantis fight. 

[Cyanide]

1. MGS2 - ~17 years later, still my high water mark for what can be accomplished in a video game, and still my go to answer for my favorite video game of all time.

2. MGS4 - 10 years on, still a technical marvel and ingenious piece of game design and raw storytelling.  Yes, the cutscenes are obnoxious, but the total package is such a loving tribute to everything that kept people so invested in the series for so long.  Also, Act 4 gave me perhaps the most feels ever in a video game.

3. MGS1 - an unparalleled piece of narrative and world-building that I feel hasn't aged well mechanically after everything that came after it.  And I know that's a shitty take, but it's really hard for me to not take the jump from 1 to 2 and not think, "oh, THIS is what Kojima was trying to pull off on 32-bit hardware."

4. MGS3 - a great game that only falls to fourth on the strength of the above.

5. Peace Walker - a good enough part of the Big Boss narrative with some cool geopolitical wrinkles.  Mostly here because...

6. MGSV - one of the most polished technical achievements in video game history, but an absolute dogshit component of the MGS mythos.  Hated almost everything about it with regard to narrative - an unfinished mess with shitty grimdark takes on existing characters, half-assed introduction and immediate invalidation of new characters, and a final jump off a cliff that makes the story seem like a cruel joke (and this from a person who unabashedly loves MGS2!) 

* Rising - as a total mark for both MGS and Platinum, I LOVE Revengeance, but didn't feel right lumping it in with the Kojima works.  A game with a tortured dev cycle that seemed destined to fail as a shunted off licensing opportunity (turns out, those would come later for Platinum...), it TOTALLY works as a fantastic take on Cyborg Ninja-side of Metal Gear.

[Jiji]

I don't know if I love the unreleased mission 51 from MGSV as much as the general consensus online. The whole white suit/red suit stuff is ridiculous though I guess it does wrap things up a lot nicer than just leaving it with the Truth. The mechanics of V are top notch but I wish it was more a labour of love than seemingly an obligation. 

And holy shit does that new metal gear online game look like the quickest of cash grab pieces of shit. Konami should sell their valuable IPs and just focus on mobile gaming and slot machines. I'm thinking 2k would love to buy up pro evo. 

[Death From Above]

It's funny how people view remasters in general. The first of the kind I can remember is Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes on gamecube. I never had a PS1 as a kid, we were a nintendo house, so that was my first modern Metal Gear and it completely ruled. But I know it's not thought of that well by people who actually played Metal Gear Solid 1 and 2. A lot of remasters seem go to like that, new people love it, the old people love what they already had. I'm not even sure exactly what it changed because I didn't play those PS1 games. It's... Metal Gear Solid 1 but with... some mechanics from 2 added in? I'm still not clear on that. But I must have finished Twin Snakes about 6 times, that game totally ruled. I won't hear otherwise.

[Raziel]

The trouble with Twin Snakes vs. OG is that the First Person Aiming and shooting mechanics from 2 competly nerfed the Ocelot fight and added a bunch of tatics to couple other fights that make the game easier, and part of the game's driving force was the difficult without being too difficult.

[Death From Above]

Sure, that makes sense. So much of evaluating series is a context thing. Like, I have no idea if the Tomb Raider remaster is an accurate representation of PS1 Tomb Raider, but I know that I was shocked as hell how good an adventure/puzzle game it was when literally the only thing I have ever heard about the old Tomb Raider games is "lol Lara Crofts boobs" and never once did anyone tell me it was the best ever Spider-Man game. Maybe if I'd played PS1 Metal Gear Solid I'd feel differently, but at the time it was a huge treat to have that series come to GameCube and it turned out to be one of my favourite titles on the console.

[TheVileOne]

1. Metal Gear Solid

2. Metal Gear Solid GBC

3. Everything else, which is pretty much overhyped, overrated, incoherent, and incomprehensible trash. 

[Raziel]

List of all the difference between MGS OG and Twin Snakes.

[Cliff Hanger]

9 hours ago, Death From Above said:

Sure, that makes sense. So much of evaluating series is a context thing. Like, I have no idea if the Tomb Raider remaster is an accurate representation of PS1 Tomb Raider, but I know that I was shocked as hell how good an adventure/puzzle game it was when literally the only thing I have ever heard about the old Tomb Raider games is "lol Lara Crofts boobs" and never once did anyone tell me it was the best ever Spider-Man game. Maybe if I'd played PS1 Metal Gear Solid I'd feel differently, but at the time it was a huge treat to have that series come to GameCube and it turned out to be one of my favourite titles on the console.

If you mean Tomb Raider Anniversary, it's a decent-but-not-great update to the PS1 game in terms of faithfulness.  But holy shit I would play thru Anniversary 3 times before I even touched a PS1 TR game.

[username]

I would go:

MGS3

MGS1

MGS2

MGSV

Peace Walker

Ground Zeroes

MGS4

[Jiji]

I totally forgot I actually beat Metal Gear 1 from the Legacy Collection before Phantom Pains dropped back in '15. Seeming as I blanked on that, I went through it again. Super fun NES game and you can see so much of what's to come right here. Playing around with breaking the 4th wall. Untrustworthy guide. Hating the players by forcing them to backtrack 100 times. A lot of the sounds and music from MGS is in here. Zany bosses. On to Metal Gear 2 and it's pretty much a simplified version of MGS. Ridiculous how much mileage Kojima gets out of every system he develops for. Always pushes consoles to their max levels all the way from NES/MSX2 through PS3.

[Death From Above]

DIdn't Metal Gear 1 have a thing where you had to know a radio code, and there's actually not said code anywhere in the original NES cart, due to an oversight, so you either had to get it from Nintendo Power or just guess?

 

The only other thing I remember is you could stop the expanding pits by pausing the game. 

[Jiji]

Fuck those pits in their gaping hole. And, yeah, I think that was the case regarding the frequencies. The NES port was a botched job all around. They changed a bunch of stuff without Kojima's consent. Guy's been getting fucked around for decades, hah.

[Raziel]

They pulled the same gimmick in MGS1 with the code for Meryl.  Best was watching someone recently playing Twin Snakes blind on a emulator and spent an hour before finally asking for help.

[John E. Dynamite]

Ooh, I gotta jump in on this.

1. Snake Eater - Best ending. Best boss fight. Best song. Best codec calls. Best ladder. One of the greatest games of all time. To be completely fair, I've only played Subsistence. I can't IMAGINE not having the right stick control the camera. Am I the only person who thinks Virtuous Mission is not that great?

2. MGS 1 - Every single thing that happens in this game is memorable. It, like Snake Eater,  are the only times Kojima perfectly balanced the sensible with the bonkers. Yeah, the gameplay's clunky in 2018 but you can always play Twin Snakes afterward.

3. Peace Walker - PEACE WALKER KICKS ASS. It should have been called Metal Gear Solid 5, there is nothing about it that disqualifies it from being viewed as a main entry. Brilliantly incorporated handheld-friendly mechanics, a very likable supporting cast of characters, and a depth of replay value unlike anything else in the series. 

tie- 4. MGS 2 - Only rivaled by Earthbound as the high point in postmodern gaming, pre-whenever-people-started-writing-articles-about-"art games" (so, like,  Braid, Journey, when everyone had a few years to realize how good Shadow of the Colossus was? time). It's still kinda clunky. The bosses are weak. And from my understanding, the reason the ending is so out there is because they had to re-write a lot of it after 9/11 - which makes a lot of sense to me.

tie-4. MGS 5. Far and away the best gameplay the series could have ever had. So much stuff to do. So many random and wonderful moments brought to life by the engine. But heinously unfinished, with a veryveryvery telegraphed ending that I was waiting for since the beginning of the intro.

6. MGS 4 - Too short, too talky, too meta, and my goodness were those boss characters (not the fights themselves) a complete waste of everyone's time. And yet it's still a great game, with memorable environments, some great callbacks and engaging mechanics. Probably the one I most need to replay.

7. PoOPS - Horrible.

MG is good. MG2 is great. Revengeance is good. Ghost Babel is great.

 

[J.T.]

Even the shittiest Metal Gear game is the spy-fi game that Alpha Protocol wanted to be when it grew up.

Y'all are fucking spoiled.

[Raziel]

That's probably the best assessment of 4 I've seen.  While the boss fights in 4 were great, there's nothing memorable about any of them aside from the Rex vs Ray fight and the final.  They just didn't develop any of those bosses the same way they did the other games.

[Death From Above]

This is so bizarre.

 

[Jiji]

That cutscene is sentimental Kojima at his best. Beautiful. "In our struggle to survive the present, we push the future farther away." It's too real, Roy. It's too real.

[Cliff Hanger]

14 hours ago, Raziel403 said:

They pulled the same gimmick in MGS1 with the code for Meryl.  Best was watching someone recently playing Twin Snakes blind on a emulator and spent an hour before finally asking for help.

I love that the MG2: Solid Snake version of this gimmick used an actual POW tap code to find the new frequency, but the US PS2 version didn't have any way to find the code without googling.  Neither did the PS3/360 port, but the Vita version FINALLY put the code into the manual.

 

Honestly, MG2SS is probably my favorite game in the entire continuity.  It's definitely the one I revisit most often and have the most to say about.