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Death Stranding Director's Cut - Kojima's post-apocalyptic deliveryman simulator

Unwanted

†††

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I don't even know how can anyone defend the stealth gameplay of MGS 1/2. 1 is painfully simple mechanically speaking, it has you evading dumb enemy soldiers very sparingly between heavy backtracking and forced-action boss battles. MGS 2 is even worse in its level design and backtracking, camera is too close to the character making playing without radar a pain in the scrotum, bosses are all terrible and unfun unlike in MGS 1, getting the dog tags to get post game locked content is a woeful idea, codec interruption every 2 minutes... MGS 2 was one of the most (well-regarded by the community) unfun games I've ever played.

5 is not without flaws but I prefer it as a stealth game miles ahead of 1 & 2, and at least you can mod the game to polish some of the most annoying flaws

3 was good though. 4 I've never played it but I know it's full blown movie
 

Cross

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you can just skip the cutscenes if you didn't know
:roll:

So what, you expect a first-time player to obsessively mash the 'skip cutscene' button as soon as a cutscene starts and to refuse to accept any codec calls while they continue to make that annoying ringing sound (or to have to skip through each individual line, since some of the codec calls will play forcibly even if you don't answer them)? Because your assessment of the first 3 hours of these games only holds true if a player jumps through those counter-intuitive hoops. To say nothing of the fact that skipping them would probably mean skipping like half of the content of the games.

Cutscenes don't take place in a vacuum. Besides grinding the flow of gameplay to an abrupt halt and robbing the player of options, they also have implications for level design. To ensure the player triggers the cutscene, the level has to be linear enough that the player can't avoid the spot where the cutscene trigger is placed. The more cutscenes your game has, the more level design is limited by such constraints.


Keep on skimming your youtube videos as basis for your arguments. I suspect you never actually played the older MGS games
I went skimming through videos because I wanted to have exact numbers for the cutscene-to-gameplay ratio. It was even worse than I remembered. Why don't you stick to discussing gameplay (or in this case, the lack thereof) rather than trying to discredit me?

I played MGS1 and MGS3 for a few hours before giving up, in both cases due to a combination of being bored with the levels and gameplay while being annoyed by the horrendous control schemes and endless barrage of awful dialogue. Levels constantly broken up in small, linear areas. You have a radar that gives away the lay-out of the area, enemy positions, their vision cones and their alert states, as well as other obstacles (yes I know it's disabled on the highest difficulty, but it still has obvious consequences for how the game is designed). Horrendous boss fights (in games about evasing enemy detection, because that totally makes sense, right). Game mechanics, such as 'alert mode' that are obvious crutches to cover up poor AI. I found virtually every aspect of the game design to be awful and off-putting

Metal Gear Solid is the original popamole game, and the fact that it's by far the most influential title on the stealth genre is one of the worst things to happen to gaming. Human Revolution is a good example of this detrimental influence, with its designers mentioning MGS as the principal inspiration for both the boss fights and the stealth gameplay.
 
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Ash

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I don't even know how can anyone defend the stealth gameplay of MGS 1/2.

I'm not defending the "stealth gameplay" (of the first three games) exclusively. I'm defending the gameplay cumulatively: the stealth, the combat, the puzzle elements, the challenge, the replayability, the balancing, the exploration, all the little details added which complement the experience and so on. It is in no way the best game evar! but it is absolutely decent. MGS3 in particular goes above just decent.

Gameplay of 1: 7/10
Gameplay of 2: 7.5/10
Gameplay of 3: 8/10

The gameplay independant of the story.

If you judge them exclusively as stealth games (despite them being multi-genre) as you two simpletons are doing then yes, it's not that great.

To ensure the player triggers the cutscene, the level has to be linear enough that the player can't avoid the spot where the cutscene trigger is placed. The more cutscenes your game has, the more level design is limited by such constraints.

You make it sound like bottlenecks isn't a frequent thing even in the most open of old school games. :roll:

Why don't you stick to discussing gameplay (or in this case, the lack thereof) rather than trying to discredit me?

There's not much to discuss when your argument lacks basis. See:

I played MGS1 and MGS3 for a few hours before giving up, in both cases

:roll:

Since your whole approach to this criticism has been disingenuous, and a bunch of your points inaccurate, I'm going to go ahead and assume your playtime is half that, if any at all.

Levels were constantly broken up in small, linear areas.

Why are you still throwing around the word "linear" when that has already been proven to be false using MGS1 of all things? MGS3 levels could get up to 5x as big.

You have a radar that gives away the lay-out of the area, enemy positions, their vision cones and their alert states, as well as other obstacles (yes I know it's disabled on the highest difficulty, but it still has obvious consequences for how the game is designed).

Immediate area. The range isn't far. And the radar exists because the default camera perspective is top-down and zooms in in certain indoor areas, limiting visibility. It's not a crutch added just to popamolify. It serves a core purpose.
That's like saying the light gem/meter in Thief and Splinter Cell were nothing but a crutch.

Horrendous boss fights (in games about evasing enemy detection, because that totally makes sense, right).

Oh, you know all about said "horrendous boss fights", you do. you beat the game and everything.

The vast majority of the boss fights were great. Furthermore, it's not strictly a stealth game, but rather a stealth/action hybrid. Sometimes you're forced to sneak, sometimes you're forced to fight. Sometimes you're forced to do other things, too. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Or are games not allowed multi-genre gameplay now just because some elements don't interweave and resonate 100%? We best retroactively remove puzzles from all the hundreds of action/stealth/other games period then.

Game mechanics, such as 'alert mode' that are obvious crutches to cover up poor AI. I found virtually every aspect of the game design to be awful and off-putting

:what:

MGS series starting with 2 features pretty incredible AI, especially for the time, the games are constantly praised for their AI. You couldn't look any more ignorant right now.

Metal Gear Solid is the original popamole game

>popamole

Is reasonably challenging, relatively open level design, handholding is kept to codex calls only and is not intruding, diverse gameplay elements and surprising gameplay depth. No modern design conventions at all except cinematics in excess. But you wouldn't know about any of that.

Eat a dick you ignorant shitlord. It really pisses me off that you come in here with a whiff of superiority and supreme enlightenment regarding games you haven't even played past the fucking tutorial phases.

I won't defend MGS for being a cutscene infested movie game. But I will absolutely defend the gameplay that is there, because it is decent and deserves as much.

and the fact that it's by far the most influential title on the stealth genre is one of the worst things to happen to gaming. Human Revolution is a good example of this detrimental influence, with its designers mentioning MGS as the principal inspiration for both their boss fights and their stealth gameplay.

Human Revolution's gameplay, stealth in particular, is poorly designed. Every empowering stealth ability ever conceived independently in stealth games is bundled together and handed out to you without notable consequence (radar, cloak, third person cover, mark & track, silent running, see through walls, awesome button takedowns). MGS isn't responsible for Eidos Montreal's incompetence, and nor are Ion Storm which were another prime inspiration. Both the original Deus Ex and the early MGS games were more sensibly balanced.
 
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Cross

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Since your whole approach to this criticism has been disingenuous
You were the one who specifically chose to focus on the first 3 hours of these games to make some sort of statement, not I. I played through those, and even a little beyond. Well, I was 'playing' in the sense that I was mostly watching cutscenes, but that's how these games are designed.

I've never bought into the 'this game sucks in the beginning, but becomes amazing after X hours, trust me' argument. Not only does it excuse terrible game design for whatever amount of hours it takes for the game to supposedly become good, but I've never found it to be accurate. Every game that I ever enjoyed either hooked me from the beginning in some way or, if it did begin with some kind of terrible tutorial segment, it merely lasted for a few minutes rather than hours. The thing I said about how cutscenes don't take place in a vacuum applies here too. Games are a cohesive whole, and a terrible opening section says something about the rest of the game as well.

Eat a dick you ignorant shitlord. It really pisses me off that you come in here with a whiff of superiority and supreme enlightenment regarding games you haven't even played past the fucking tutorial phases.
:lol: Your unbelievably shitty taste in games has been duly noted.

Since you seem to be so triggered by this subject, the only other thing I will address is something unrelated to MGS:

and nor are Ion Storm which were another prime inspiration
It wasn't. A designer on Human Revolution even gave a GDC presentation where he outlines how the development team disliked basically every aspect of the original Deus Ex and instead looked to a bunch of unrelated console games for inspiration. Here is the presentation in case you're interested: https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1015489/Reimagining-a-Classic-The-Design
 
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Ash

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Hey, you giant ignoramus:

“You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.”
― Harlan Ellison

Come back when you've formed the ability to apply critical thinking rather than jumping to conclusions about everything.

What you don't seem to grasp is that while MGSV may have improved upon the core gameplay mechanics and control, that doesn't mean shit when the level design is massively quantity over quality and the gameplay loop is dull and repetitive. But you've already proven yourself to be a decliner if you think MGSV has in any way notable level design let alone the "best in the series".

Regarding the Human Revolution thing, try not to exaggerate. While the devs were massive MGS faggots and Human Revolution is minor decline, the components of Human Revolution is more Deus Ex than it is MGS. There's only some parallels to MGS.

You know those punks that played Human Rev. then started the original, gave up on the first mission and thought it was overall dated shit, or just missed the point in general and then went on to claim Human Revolution is so much better? That's what you're doing, but for MGS. MGS3 is the best in the series regarding gameplay.
 
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Cross

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What you don't seem to grasp is that while MGSV may have improved upon the core gameplay mechanics and control
I don't recall saying anything about MGSV's core gameplay mechanics and control. I don't even recall saying anything about MGSV being a good game, merely that it was better than previous MGS games in some respects.

You know those punks that played Human Rev. then started the original, gave up on the first mission and thought it was overall dated shit, or just missed the point in general and then went on to claim Human Revolution is so much better? That's what you're doing, but for MGS. MGS3 is the best in the series regarding gameplay.
You do realize that earlier in this thread, I criticized MGS specifically for falling short compared to its contemporaries? 1998 for example saw the release of other stealth titles such as Tenchu, Commandos and Thief, all of which are much better than MGS.

The phenomenon you describe is fairly common, but I've only ever seen it occur with console-only gamers (i.e. the vast majority of gamers) whose first exposure to a formerly PC-exclusive franchise was the multiplatform reboot (e.g. Fallout 3, BioShock, Human Revolution), who go back and play the first title and for whatever reason then conclude it's awful. They don't seem to have any problem enjoying older console games however. The designers of Human Revolution would fall in this category, considering they disliked OG Deus Ex while enjoying MGS enough to base significant parts of their game on it.

Regarding the Human Revolution thing, try not to exaggerate. While the devs were massive MGS faggots and Human Revolution is minor decline, the components of Human Revolution is more Deus Ex than it is MGS. There's only some parallels to MGS.
The general concept of a multi-path cyberpunk action-RPG is obviously the same as Deus Ex. But the execution of that concept is another story, and when it comes to actual game mechanics (or even just narrative elements) and their implementation OG Deus Ex, or anything in the tradition of Looking Glass, was an afterthought. It's obvious the developers at Eidos were ordered by their publisher to make a game using the Deus Ex IP, while they didn't even want to make a first-person game (consdering HR and MD transition to third person for virtually everything they could get away with: takedown moves, climbing a ladder, taking cover, leaning against a wall, using an active augmentation, etc.), much less wanted to make a Deus Ex game.

But I'll let the developers speak for themselves:

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DeepOcean

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MGS V is a third person Far Cry game, while I hated the old MGS games mostly because the awful cameras and controls, at least they had an identity.
 
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In the real world, the gameplay to cutscene/tutorial/gimmicky nonsense ratio in MGS5 is a vast improvement over its predecessors, as is its level design.

:what:

MGS5 has some of the worst level design in the series, thanks to the unnecessary quantity-over-quality open world. Some individual locations are great but not the whole package. And while there's definitely a lot of cutscene bloat in the older games, at least in MGS3 you can just skip all the tutorial conversations, unlike the obnoxious opening of TPP.

While MGS5 doesn't assault you with endless cutscenes throughout the game like MGS4, for example, it's filled with endless waiting in helicopters or riding towards the next faraway destination, like so many other modern open world games.

Did you play MGS5? I'll take the short little helicopter intros you're talking about over the unbreakablely long install screens trying to talk you out of playing the game.

I'd say most of the individual locations are pretty great. The only problem is the game has you going over them a number of times as opposed to having more unique locations for missions. Although I didn't find this to be much of a problem in and of itself as much as it could have been so much better with some more stuff.
 

Ash

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You do realize that earlier in this thread, I criticized MGS specifically for falling short compared to its contemporaries? 1998 for example saw the release of other stealth titles such as Tenchu, Commandos and Thief, all of which are much better than MGS.

Except you never really played MGS, so you've no real data for comparison to how it compares to those other titles. As a stealth game it is worse than all three, but MGS isn't solely focused on stealth as already established. At least your contempt for Eidos Montreal/Human Revolution is rightly placed, though.

Anyway, come back when you're more informed on the subject.
 
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In regard to the original PSX version of MGS, when it comes to its gameplay, stealth is the thing it's doing best. Aiming was incredibly awkward in that game. Speaking purely from a gameplay perspective, MGS has never been better than it is in MGSV.
 

Cross

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You do realize that earlier in this thread, I criticized MGS specifically for falling short compared to its contemporaries? 1998 for example saw the release of other stealth titles such as Tenchu, Commandos and Thief, all of which are much better than MGS.

Except you never really played MGS, so you've no real data for comparison to how it compares to those other titles.
You: The first 3 hours of MGS are amazing and show how much better it is than MGSV.
Me: I played the first 3 hours of MGS and thought it sucked ass.
You: How dare you judge MGS by the first 3 hours!

:retarded:

As a stealth game it is worse than all three, but MGS isn't solely focused on stealth as already established.
What else is it focused on then? Of those games, Commandos is the one that arguably falls into another genre, that of a real-time tactics game.
 

Ash

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I've played the games. That makes me informed and eligible to do so. You on the other hand are not informed yet are vehemently arguing on a subject you don't understand, and as a result are spewing bullshit.

You newfags/alts say no more on the matter until you've played the highlight of the series, MGS3. It's anything but popamole. It's a stealth game, it's a combat game, it's a hunting game, it's a survival game, and has a lot of hidden gameplay depth. You can even do shit like hunt and non-lethally capture snakes, then throw them at people. Most importantly though, it's actually challenging, has decent level design, and is never repetitive, unlike MGS5.
 

DJOGamer PT

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MGS3 camouflage ... & localised health systems? Gone.

That's not true. MGS5 posses both those systems.
Camouflage has a clear impact in 5, but not to the same extent as 3. In 3 since areas were smaller, with the right camouflage you would become almost invisible.
Localised Health sort of exists as a injury mechanic. But however due to the game's low difficulty, it doesn't happen very often.

What you don't seem to grasp is that while MGSV may have improved upon the core gameplay mechanics and control, that doesn't mean shit when the level design is massively quantity over quality and the gameplay loop is dull and repetitive.

Not that I am completly disagreeing with you. MGS3 is the series best title, and a pretty good game. But MGS5 also isn't as bad as you're making it.

I never seen MGS series as a whole (except the MG games) as stealth games, they were always Action games with heavy Stealth elements.

MGS5 core gameplay is rock solid. It feels good just to move Venom Snake around the world. The AI is the best in the series, and probably one of the best in the industry. And like in 3, the more advanced mechanics are only learnt by yourself, for instance CQC:



After mastering this you kind of feel like a 80's action hero. Just a shame for the low difficulty. But then again even in 1/2/3 you can take a whole magazine of bullets before having to use the magical instant heal ration. But yes, in 5 this problem is much worse (mainly because of the fast health regeneration and high HP).
But saying that good gameplay is meangless without the right content to match it, is false and kind of an unfair statemet, as it does improve the experience. MGR for example, like all Platinum games has linear level design and lots of scripted events, but it's twichy action gameplay and enemy design is solid and the game is good and fun.

And there are some good levels and missions. 5 definitivly doesn't have the worse level design in the series.

5's main problems are, besides the difficulty (that I had mostly no issues with this since I played with the Hardcore Mod), are the lack of meaningful content (there are only 5/7 somewhat good missions out of the 50) and level design that couldn't match the gameplay's quality (something along Ground Zeroes level of quality).
Altough I believe this is due, to the Konami shit and the fact that Kojima truly wanted to put down the series after 3 (he only made 4 because of corporate pressure and fan death treaths to answer MGS2 ending questions - this is also evident by the fact 4 is the most boring, cut-scene heavy, fan service game of the series).
But it still isn't a shit game.

3 doesn't suffer any of 5's problems, and it's overrall a tighter more replayable game.
Also 3 since it's posses more systems there are more ways to aproach an obstacle - just yesterday while repalying I had to avoid a dog, so I threw near him rotten meat; he ate it and passed out (just how awesome is that).
3 also posses some very good AI:



Overall while 3 is the best, I still found 5 to be a good game and a nice example of a good systemic game.

5 also has some pretty good tunes:
 
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Hobo Elf

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Ash I've had this exact same discussion with Cross before, multiple times even, but concerning different games. It's an exercise in futility as this person likes to pretend that they are an expert on games he has never played. Don't bother.
 

Egosphere

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I'm glad Silent Hills is dead. Kojima is decent at making war games with floating people, convoluted stories told through info dumps and over the top cutscenes. But they are completely antithetical to what constituted the old SH games. Death Stranding is his comfort zone.
 

Jasede

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Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Codex Year of the Donut I'm very into cock and ball torture
PT really didn't seem like it was full of info dumps, over the top cutscenes and convoluted stories, though. If anything it was a great example of show, don't tell.
 

Cross

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Ash I've had this exact same discussion with Cross before, multiple times even, but concerning different games. It's an exercise in futility as this person likes to pretend that they are an expert on games he has never played. Don't bother.
I don't even remember having those discussions, but they must have been pretty traumatic for you. Are you so blinded by your butthurt that you lost the ability to read? No, I'm not an expert on these games. Gee, I wonder what gave me away. Could it be the posts in this topic where I said that I never played past the first few hours, and that I only replied here because this discussion was based on the premise that the first few hours are representative of these games? You are free to disagree with that premise, but it didn't come from me.

But you don't need to be an expert to see what I am seeing, which is a bunch of people (rightfully) criticizing some games for certain design choices while (inexplicably) praising other games with those same design choices, and when faced with this contradiction, responding with all the wrath of a woman (or Kojima fanboy) scorned. Because of that, I didn't bother to respond to even a fraction of all the dishonesty in this topic, but perhaps I should have. Take arguments like these:

You have a radar that gives away the lay-out of the area, enemy positions, their vision cones and their alert states, as well as other obstacles (yes I know it's disabled on the highest difficulty, but it still has obvious consequences for how the game is designed).
Immediate area. The range isn't far. And the radar exists because the default camera perspective is top-down and zooms in in certain indoor areas, limiting visibility. It's not a crutch added just to popamolify. It serves a core purpose.
That's like saying the light gem/meter in Thief and Splinter Cell were nothing but a crutch.
The light gem is not remotely the same, because it doesn't tell you anything about the enemies. It only informs you about Garrett's status, much like a health bar or ammo indicator. You could probably even remove the light gem from Thief with little consequence, because the game already darkens/lightens the weapon Garrett is holding depending on the lighting conditions he's standing in.

Snake's radar on the hand functions exactly like all those intrusive HUD elements from modern games that completely remove the need to watch and listen to your environment by supplying you with information only an omniscient god would know. Well, I say 'exactly', but the MGS radar gives you even more information than any modern game I can think of.

You are right that the radar is necessitated by the claustrophobic view, but that betrays another flaw. In terms of game design, the first few MGS games are essentially 2D top-down games clumsily inserted into a 3D engine. As a result, they barely utilize 3D space in any meaningful way. On a subsconscious level this is probably why I bounced off the games so hard, but I wasn't able to articulate why until now.

The more I think about these games, the more awful they seem to be. But I'm sure I'm completely wrong and these games turn out to be amazing after the first few hours that I played.
 
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Egosphere

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PT really didn't seem like it was full of info dumps, over the top cutscenes and convoluted stories, though. If anything it was a great example of show, don't tell.
I'm sure Kojima wouldn't pass up the opportunity to stuff the final product with info dumps. The story was setting up for some secretive cabal talking to you through the radio, a child coming back from the dead with his "new toys" etc.
The demo itself was a well polished re-imagining of bits and pieces of SH4:
Eternal looping hallway = "Rusted bloody key" loop in the forest world in SH4
Henry ghost haunting = Lisa ghost haunting
Both have a radio as a central plot device, both have the setting corrupt slowly as you progress, both feature a peephole, dead bodies ( baby in PT, cat in SH4 ) inside a fridge etc. There's even similarity in the main 'challenge' - being unable to escape from your own apartment.


There is a theory some Kojima fanboys are making on youtube ... the strings connecting everything are manipulated by the player as if he was a master of puppets and the game characters recognize this feeling helplessly manipulated and their fate to be decided by those that control them.

What a genius. He's only 2 decades behind Remedy :lol:

 

fantadomat

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Hahaha it will be glorious fun when the game comes out,not the game mind you,the fucking reaction of the fans when they realise that it is shit. After all the 11/10 awards and the fan vomit on the youtube. Oh it will be amazing :smug:
 

DJOGamer PT

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There is a theory some Kojima fanboys are making on youtube ... the strings connecting everything are manipulated by the player as if he was a master of puppets and the game characters recognize this feeling helplessly manipulated and their fate to be decided by those that control them.

What a genius. He's only 2 decades behind Remedy :lol:



Not really.

That scene is more of a joke than something actually serious. While in MGS2 it's hinted numerous times that what Raiden is experiecing isn't even real. There is even one scene where Raiden literrally rejects the player's command (he throws dogtags with your name on it away), and that scene coincides with the game's ending.

And MGS2 came the same year as Max Payne 1.
 

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