Metal Gear Solid

[Don]

I'm not a fan of the series and I really don't like the gameplay, but this series has always impressed me with the way it can present a bunch of characters whose abilities/relationships are more improbable than your generic Anime and yet make it seem like believeable.

At the rate MGS is going, by the time you hit MGS 10 you'll probably have a cast like:

Big Boss on a wheelchair, and still can do CQC on anything, including Metal Gears.

Solid Snake, standard stuff.

Raiden will have a lightsaber and optical camofluage but he'll still be a joke, probably get crushed by a Metal Gear as soon as the story starts.

And it'll somehow all seem very cool no matter how ridiculous it sounds. I think Big Boss is the only character I can think of who can push a Metal Gear back with just his hands and it looks totally reasonable.

[Zeus]

The gamemplay in MGS was never great....until #4. The gameplay in that game is awesome. You can play it so many different ways it's nuts.

And no storyline in any other game (or series) I played even comes close to the complexity of MGS, especially #4. No RPG even. It's amazing how it ties back to all the games before it, even the MSX computer ones, and does it incredibly well. MGS4 still has not been beat for best graphics or best overall game of this entire generation.

[Don]

The story of MGS seems to be just about the Man behind the Man behind the Man, with everyone being some kind of spy of some sorts and how the Internet can control everything in a way similar to Serial Experiment Lain. But discussing the story of the game is pretty much pointless because it's really all about the game's actors. It's like saying if you read the script of Star Wars it might go like:

Luke fights Darth Vader, and Darth Vader reveals that he is Luke's father.

That in no way captures what the actual scene is like. It's kind of strange as actors in a game are, by defintion, all fake, and yet most game's actors suck incredibly hard. On the other hand, all of MGS's major actors are clearly very good at their jobs. The story might not make much sense but who cares when you got Snake as your lead guy? You can probably have a game that's just about Big Boss doing CQCs on Metal Gears from a wheelchair and it'll still be a good game because he's just that awesome. This is also why all the MGS games that starred Raiden seem to flop pretty hard, because it lacks the star power of Snake, even though everything else about the game is essentially the same.

[Zeus]

The greatness of Hayter as Snake in no way diminishes the brilliance of that storyline. Even with mediocre actors that story is unreal. I didn't even get a lot of it my first time through the game. It was when my cousins and I watches run-throughs of the MSX games and then beat #1-4 all in succession in a 2 month period and sift through the MGS Database did we really get just how intricate and well thought-out it really is. Remember what everyone thought was a jumbled mess of a story in #2? It all makes perfect sense once you watch #4.

#4 is top-notch in every way imaginable from voice acting to story to graphics to gameplay to length....everything. There is no aspect of the game that is merely good, all of it is great. The only way I can see people disliking it is:

1) They just don't like that type of game (action)
2) They don't like the series and never give it a chance, even with the extreme changes in gameplay
3) They hate the 8+ hours of cutscenes (some over 45 minutes long), even though you can pause them, and don't like to watch

There have been a lot of brilliant games this generation (L4D, Red Dead, Alan Wake, Gears 2, Halo Reach, Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2, New Super Mario Bros + Wii, Bioshock...Castlevania is on its way to joining them) but MGS4 is still the top of the heap, IMO. Even 2 1/2 years later it hasn't been surpassed. I'm hoping eventually something will.

[Mully]

MGS1 is probably my favorite game ever; despite the flaws. I pumped a lot of hours into the first one.

[Zeus]

MGS1 is probably my favorite game ever; despite the flaws. I pumped a lot of hours into the first one.

You really gotta replay it (make sure you get the superior GC version) then play the others including #4 (and the gameplay in #4 takes MGS to a whole new level). You'd be absolutely amazed where they take the storyline and how much they tie stuff together. #2 is still the weakest but the storyline makes WAAAY more sense and works really well after #4 whereas when you played it back in 2001, it just seemed like a ridiculous jumbled mess that was so far and over-the-top in its conspiracy theory. Even though #3 is the prequel timeline-wise, it's still best to play them in order of release.

And playing them all in close proximity to each other really allows you to see just how intricate the story really is since you won't have the years (decade?) long gap. There's so much that you'll miss a lot of the tie-ins if you're trying to go back years in your memory. No one can possibly remember that kind of detail unless it's fresh in their minds

[Don]

10 years or whatever long the series lasted (in real life time) is a very long time to explain any improbable plot holes.

At any rate tie-ins are more like relevent by necessity. In MGS: Peace Walker one of the guy was Otacon's father who happens to be a nerdy scientist too. Is there a reason why Otacon's father couldn't be Big Boss's janitor? No but it wouldn't be interesting that way. The fact that no-name guys in MGS1 ended up being important guys in MGS4 isn't some kind of good plot writing. It's not like they had traits that'd make them stand out, and as far as you know some of them could've got ran over by a car in the time between MGS1 to MGS4 and there would be no profound outcome to the story. But they show up in MGS4 in a standard 'remember these guys from MGS1?' deal.

It's like in Saint Seiya the Gemini Saint always has to be the guy who attempted to assassinate the Pope in any generation because that's what he's remembered for. If you travel 250 years back in the past you'll find the Gemini Saint trying to assassinate the Pope there, and this has probably happened every 250 years in the history of the conflict. This isn't some kind of continuity or clever writing. It's simply because Saga was the betrayer in the original Saint Seiya so anyone who bears his sign is just now automatically the betrayer for all the past and future generations. You can argue Otacon plays an important recurring role in the story, but certainly not the 5th guy you called on the Codec in MGS1. That person is important because he/she is part of the game that made the MGS franchise and for that reason only.

[Zeus]

Anyone can re-write any character in any sequel from any prequel, it's not that hard. And it's something that regularly happens. What makes MGS4's so impressive is how well it's done, how they intertwined small characters or events into the over-arching events of #4. Often times, they were even small, minor things that weren't overly important to the overall storyline but had some nice tie-ins and just gave the world that much more continuity and depth.

A good example would be Gogolovich, one of the scientists who worked for Big Boss in Metal Gear 2 for the MSX computer but ended up helping you (decent-sized secondary character) for I believe moral reasons - I could be wrong, but the "why" doesn't matter - being the one who invented the cyborg technology and working with Raiden after the events of MGS2, eventually having to use the technology on Raiden in order for them to battle the Patriots. Basically they were like a rogue team doing all they can to battle the big, bad Patriots.

It's a relatively minor detail, one that at least 99% of the people wouldn't even make the connection to (the only reason we saw it is we had just watched the MG2 walkthrough, recognized the character name but couldn't be sure of exactly who he was, and looked it up in the MGS Database), but what it did was take a 20 year-old character who had a minor role and extend his role such that not only did it work based on the old character but properly fit him into the events in between the games. If you don't notice, it's not a big deal, the story still makes perfect sense. If you do notice, it's just that much "neater" to see the creators not only work someone like that in but even remember who that character was. It showed how much time and effort they put into making sure that storyline worked and fit. And that was just one example that stuck in my mind, there's tons more everywhere. I mean, who the hell wasn't happy to find out who Big Mama was?

Any game that can take the convoluted ending of MGS2 and the character Raiden and make them not only work properly but make them great get some serious props.

[Don]

I don't think Raiden ever become a good character. To me Metal Gear was always about Snake/Big Boss, and the important secondary characters would be The Boss, Ocelet, Liquid (though he's really kind of just there), and the Ninja (various incarnations). The minor stuff doesn't add anything to the game but nor does it detract from it so I'm indifferent to the fact that Otacon's father was a nerdy scientist in Peace Walker and any similar number of recurring cameos.

I think the whole Patriots are useless as villians or some kind of Man behind the Man. When you consider Big Boss becomes more legendary after each game it's pretty clear he could've taken out all the Patriots while on a wheelchair on life support. Of course that's probably why there's virtually no one important you've to fight that's actually affiliated with the Patriots.

[Zeus]

Have you beaten MGS4? Doesn't sound like it