I should begin this blog with a disclaimer – I have played all of the Metal Gear Solid games, and sooner or later I know I will play 4. With that out of the way, I want to say that the hype for MGS4 can get puzzling at best.
Now I’m not saying that the game deserves no hype. Anything MGS is guaranteed to get people talking, and for good reason. It just seems weird. Unless I wasn’t paying attention, it felt like MGS3 had the least amount of hype and talk before its release, and yet it for my money its the best game in the series. Now with MGS4 we get a new trailer ever few months, and from just this we’ve got floods of comments where people are already claiming it to be the best game of this generation. I guess all Kojima had to do was revert back to MGS2’s “goofy but absolutely serious” universe instead of MGS3’s “goofy and it damn well knows it” style.
But there’s more than that. The newest trailer details some of the new bosses in the game. People are looking at them like the craziest shit in the world. Indeed, they are crazy, but not in a good way. Even for Kojima, this is some ridiculous stuff.
Let’s ignore the fact that they’re all women, which makes some strange sense in a Kojima way. Considering how much homo-eroticism was present in past games, a complete 360 rounds out the package, or something. But anyway, we’ve got a wolf-thing with a comically large butt that runs around screaming “rage!!”. We’ve got a tentacle beast, which was already done before by Solidus, which was already done before by Doctor Octopus. There’s a psychic boss that doesn’t seem to do much but float, and one with giant wings. Creativity? I’m still looking for it.
Then there’s the biggest fact – nothing interesting happens in the video. The flying chick swoops over twice and fires some missiles. I’ve seen more action in a GI Joe commercial. The psychic seems to make one kill (with psychic puppet strings – see Devil May Cry), and otherwise the camera just zooms in on her doing absolutely nothing. The tentacle lady swipes at a few blokes by an alley, and the wolf acts…well, like a giant wolf should, tearing the shit out of things. So that’s 3 out of 4 that are completely boring.
This video clip does not indicate that MGS4 is going to suck, though it isn’t a good sign either. It also does not show me that it is going to rule. In fact it shows us absolutely nothing, not until we know and see more by actually playing the game. I see nothing wrong with this. But how it manages to get so many gamers hot and bothered is baffling. Is this all you need to show to get people pumped? A bunch of comic book monsters not doing cool things? Remind me about that when I try to make a game one day.
If you buy a Playstation 3 just for this, please give Videolamer your money instead. No game is worth $600 for, and that’s worth a lot of Saturn games
What kills me about the whole boss thing is that they’re making them seem very two-dimensional, like what they did with Snake Eater. None of those bosses felt integral to the plot, like what they did with MGS1 and 2. They were just bosses that needed to fill in part of the game, and these Beauty and the Beast bosses look like they’re continuing with that style. You can see that with the one “RAGE!!” guy. That’s just not that interesting in my mind. They all look pretty cool, but they don’t seem very deep, which is extremely disappointing for a game like MGS.
But you do have to realize the idea of worth is subjective. I actually think MGS4 is worth $600. Actually getting that money is the problem.
And you can also come from Konami’s point of view with this. If this is all it takes to hype up a game and turn the populace into drooling zombies, then why try to blow it all out with some crazy footage?
The thing with the Cobras in MGS3, is that many fans theorize the 2d’ness is intentional. The whole “villains with backstories” Was done in MGS1, 2, and the Game Boy color game. MGS3 on the other hand, is like a ridiculous, rambo-fused vision of a 60’s spy film. The Cobras fell into that vibe perfectly.
But MGS4 links with 2, and neither have the same vibe as 3, so two-dimensional villains are not going to work.
I still don’t think any one game is worth a rent payment :(
Konami is indeed wise, but the past trailer with the Raiden-Vamp fight makes this one look like child’s play. I guess my expectations were raised to 11.
I will say that I am not in the norm. Money equates to gaming in my mind. It can have no games and I would still buy it:)
But I understand what you mean by 3’s style and its characters. I guess I prefer to have the style created in 1 and 2, as it was one of the reasons why I picked the first MGS as my favorite one. Having Psycho Mantis and Vulcan Raven talk to you about philosophy and what happened in their lives made the game seem so amazing to me.
I will say I like the look of the octopus lady. Seeing her arms animate on screen is going to be a feast for the eyes.
I agree, nothing does happen in the video. Good guys fight bad guys. Bad guys win. 10 seconds worth of plot becomes a five minute snooze fest.
The bosses look particularly stupid to me because the graphics are so good. It’s ironic that the more realistic things look the worse many designs seem. As an analogy, think of how comic heroes look fine in comics but retarded at best when played by live actors.
Perhaps people are so excited because they trust that the bosses introduced will eventually have amazing showdowns. After all, it doesn’t matter that almost all of what we saw of Psycho Mantis in MGS1 was some guy floating in midair making vague threats, because when it came to the actual boss battle itself, Kojima delivered. Likewise with The End from MGS3. Could we really have gathered from footage of an old man in a wheelchair that one of the most enjoyable boss fights in MGS history was around the corner? I don’t know that my personal second favorite boss from that game (The Rage) even shows up outside of battle, not counting some lame cameo appearance in a flashback sequence.
I guess I’m saying that people do have at least one good reason to be excited about the possibilities of what’s been shown boss-wise for MGS4. Namely that, for the most part (I’m looking at you Fatman), Kojima brings the goods.
I just realized that I never watched videos of any of the other MGS games before they released. I’m going against my no hype rule!
No more MGS4 videos for me. I’ll ruin the experience.
I was with you on the first two paragraphs. Yes, MGS4 looks weird, but I’ve known that for over a year – ever since we learned that Metal Gears would all be wearing pumps. And yeah, now that you mention it, what was with the no hype MGS3. When that came out, I thought I was the last one playing this franchise. And finally, sadly, yes, that was a cyber wolf with a badonkadonk.
But then you start taking shots of don’t know what you’re talking about. (Hey, we’ve all had it, it goes down easy, but has a horrible aftertaste.) Unless I’m completely wrong about what gay is (and if so, I’m really dreading the upcoming discussion with my parents) having an all female boss cast is not homo-erotic. Although I agree that Kojima goes in this direction far too often for his audience.
Also, did you not see everyone get sliced in f-ing half when the winged one who can’t help sharing her rage flies by? New? Maybe not, but last time I watched 300 slicing people in half was called totally fucking awesome.
Does the PS3 and its total BS library suck? Of course. But when there are so many reasonable things to hate about Sony, don’t hate unnecessarily. I can’t help but think that if this game had a midget Italian plumber in a “boo” suit some of you guys would be swooning.
I complain about the sexist character design in Soul Calibur, the putrid voice acting in Resident Evil games, the lack of depth and length in the Wario Ware games, and the androgynous characters and their terrible dialog in many Final Fantasys. These complaints don’t mean I think the games are bad. Many great games have terrible aspects. Did you see the pretentious non-sensical ending of Shadow of the Colossus? A fucking baby? What?
These bosses look stupid to me. They may be awesome to fight in game, but design wise they are unintentionally comical.
Zenstrabo, my comment on homo eroticism was written poorly in the blog, but I hope that I semi know what I’m talking about. That was referring to MGS2’s Raiden-ball grabbing-shenanigans, and MGS3’s General Raikov. MGS4 does the opposite, or something, and yeah.
That’s all I have to say.
I’ve also played all MGS game (still have to finish the last one though) and I am a big, big fan of the series, but to be honest going from being one of the first PS3 launch games to a quarter 1 2008 release(I believe we’re in for another delay) really kinda killed for me. All these trailers and videos had the opposite effect than the one intended. I’d prefer they speed up and finish the game and stop teasing with the videos. And plus…most of what I’ve seen were prerendered videos and although that’s an important aspect of the MGS games, I’m more curios about the gameplay.
That being said I’d like to say this has been the funniest article I’ve read all day and I’ve read a few. Good one.
Just to hop in and nit-pick, I think if we’re talking about MGS4 going in the opposite direction to previous games’ homo-eroticism, it’s really more of a 180. A 360 would put them back facing in the exact same direction.
Stefan, thank you for pointing out my idiocy.