The Shrine

Back in the day, this friend watched me play MGS, and MGS2 was one of his few PS2 games.

Here are my thoughts, in no particular order:

• My relationship with MGS overall could be accurately described as being of the love/hate variety.
• The final boss battle was EXCRUCIATINGLY tedious and was absolutely the WRONG way to end the game.
• The ending cinemas went on for like an hour (no kidding).
• There's a wedding at the end. Not what I'm looking for.
• They've successfully made a game that, even after beating it on the hardest difficulty level, you feel like you've just begun to experience it. No mean feat.
• I feel like going up to random strangers and telling them that I beat MGS4 on Hard, and I would expect them to look at me with respect.
• Upon beating the game I was informed that I have received the title of "Eagle," an honor bestowed upon players who have "mastered weapons handling and racked up headshots." Booya!
• The ending credits, which you have to sit through in order to see the final final cinema, are like twenty minutes long. I'm pretty sure every single citizen of Japan had something to do with this game.
• At no point in the game do you get to use a sword, which I consider a PROFOUND flaw.
• I developed a new respect for the game after playing a little bit of Call of Duty Modern Warfare--there's an overall Asian philosophy to MGS that I prefer over the "EXXXTREME" American feel of COD.
• The plot has "developed" to the point where there are practically more female characters than male characters, and I don't know who half of these broads are.

Wow, I could not disagree more with the last boss fight. It was absolutely perfect in every way, from nostalgia, to absolutely perfect fit within the entire MGS universe, to what I think is easily the best looking fight ever, visually. It was freakin' amazing.

Ending cinemas from just before the last boss fight to after it to the very end was closer to 2 hours. But you know what? They were ABSOLUTELY necessary. There is such an amazing amount of stuff they tie together it's insane (read the encyclopedia after you beat the game to see just how unbelievably complex it is). And they do it splendidly. This is the Six Feet series ending for video games, it's absolutely amazing and there's NOTHING left. My cuz's and I just beat it over the Xmas holidays after playing through MGS1, 2, and 3 first and let me tell you, there is SO much more you pick up when you play them in a row like that. It was incredibly well done.

Wedding at the end was an issue? He's searching. Really, it was just a conduit to tying up the storyline (the reveal quite a bit of background story during the wedding) and fit fine.

The ending credits aren't nearly as tedious as he's making them out to be. Yeah, about 10-15 minutes or so but no longer than any other big-ass budget game like a FF or Modern Warfare. And man, you NEED to see the 20+ minute-long cinema after it to get the complete and utter ending to the series. If you missed that you missed far too much.

At the end of the day, by the time you get to MGS4, you either love the storyline or you gave up after #2 and shouldn't be playing #4 anyways. The whole reason there were such insanely long cutscenes is 'cause there needed to be and you know what? Fans of the series want them. Hell, the second and third games had 40+ minute long cutscenes as well (not as many and not in a row) so really, by now you shouldn't be complaining about it. It's either your cup of tea or it's not. And they VAAASTLY improved the gameplay from the previous iterations, which was a huge bonus.