Metal Gear: Ground Zeroes

If you've got a gamecube around, pick up a copy of Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes, it's a remastered version of Metal Gear Solid in which they updated the graphics, cut-scenes and game engine to match the quality of the later iterations. The PSX original isn't bad, but the Gamecube version will have aged better. It's like the GC version of Resident Evil that came out, which you should also play.

I've got nothing but love for those games, despite their shortcomings. MGS3: Snake Eater is probably my favorite, because of the balance of awesome story, cinematic quality, and super-fun survival/sneaking gameplay elements.

I actually rented a PS3 for a weekend just so that I could play MGS4, and it looks as if I'll have to do it once more. I've long since stopped playing video games, but the MGS series keeps me coming back for more. I'm always intrigued to see what Kojima will do next.

Is the xbla pack version similar to the hd collection, if not get the latter for more win.

  On 9/28/2012 at 12:06 AM, Npoess said:

But how are they holding up?

Pretty well I'd say. The gameplay is quite unique to the MGS series so it's not something done to death.

Okay I'll have to check it out then :)

how are the controls? I've heard they can be a bit clunky.

  On 9/28/2012 at 9:43 AM, Djeroek said:

Is the xbla pack version similar to the hd collection, if not get the latter for more win.

It's actually just MGS 2&3, I just discovered. Good thing I didn't buy it yet.

  On 9/28/2012 at 8:43 AM, Wall Bird said:

I've got nothing but love for those games, despite their shortcomings. MGS3: Snake Eater is probably my favorite, because of the balance of awesome story, cinematic quality, and super-fun survival/sneaking gameplay elements.

Yeah they definitely got the balance right on that one. Lots of gameplay sections too. I think the gameplay in MGS4 was criminally short. Acts 1 and 2 could easily have been twice the size, it felt that just as you were getting into it, you'd move on to the next area. Saying that, what gameplay there was was fucking amazing, especially dicking around with the octocam. With it being open world, I think ground zeroes should hopefully have loads of gameplay, as you can approach the target in different ways. Well excited.

  On 9/28/2012 at 6:09 PM, Npoess said:

Okay I'll have to check it out then :)

 

how are the controls? I've heard they can be a bit clunky.

 

  On 9/28/2012 at 9:43 AM, Djeroek said:

Is the xbla pack version similar to the hd collection, if not get the latter for more win.

 

It's actually just MGS 2&3, I just discovered. Good thing I didn't buy it yet.

Yeah I'm getting the HD collection mainly because of Peace Walker, which I've heard is amazing and one of the best games in the series.

For anyone who never played the originals - they are definitely worth it, but like others have said, be patient and don't rush through gameplay sections. A lot of the novelty - such as shooting melons and ice cube buckets into pieces, testing the enemy AI, amazing graphics and cutscenes will seem like standard fare today, but when it came out it was fucking mind blowing. If COD were Metallica, then MGS is Black Sabbath, laying the foundations of what made games today awesome. There's asian boobs in it as well.

the collection is alone worth the price for experiencing the boss fight with The End.

I don't think I will ever have a better gaming experience.

  On 9/28/2012 at 1:13 AM, phling said:

imo MGS1 is still the best game of the series..

Really worth playing, and you should definitely start with this one. The later games' plots are increasingly wacky, though the gameplay gets more polished along with the graphics..

 

MGS1's gfx might look dated from a technical standpoint now, but its style is incredible.

 

You'll have to deal with the fact that you can't really skip the long, looong spoken dialog scenes. Lots of button mashing sentence by sentence. They're essential to the story though and it's best to not skip them, take some time for the game, immerse yourself and take it all in.

The remake for GameCube had great graphics.

  On 9/28/2012 at 10:18 PM, Rubin Farr said:

  On 9/28/2012 at 1:13 AM, phling said:

imo MGS1 is still the best game of the series..

Really worth playing, and you should definitely start with this one. The later games' plots are increasingly wacky, though the gameplay gets more polished along with the graphics..

 

MGS1's gfx might look dated from a technical standpoint now, but its style is incredible.

 

You'll have to deal with the fact that you can't really skip the long, looong spoken dialog scenes. Lots of button mashing sentence by sentence. They're essential to the story though and it's best to not skip them, take some time for the game, immerse yourself and take it all in.

The remake for GameCube had great graphics.

But worse music and voice acting. I prefer the original's music by faaaaaaar.

yes! the gamecube version is a weird remake really...

this game was made for the PS1 and is best played in its non-filtered, pixelated glory.

  On 9/28/2012 at 10:18 PM, Rubin Farr said:

The remake for GameCube had great graphics.

Not just that. I think the most welcome and under-appreciated addition that will help the game age well was the inclusion of first-person aiming, which you may remember was not introduced to the series until MGS2. This makes the game more immersive by allowing for you to look around your surroundings and not rely on the 3rd person camera position, which can make critical shots from a distance somewhat clumsy.

Either way, go play those games. I hope you become sufficiently engrossed to play them all, because they're fantastic accomplishments in the arts of game design and storytelling.

I realize I'm in the minority here, but I thought all the Metal Gear games outside the first one were pretty awful. The goofy storylines are something out of adolescent GI Joe fan-fiction...the pacing of gameplay to non-interactive movie watching was terrible with the first game and only got worse with each installment (to the point where MGS4 took about 2-3 hours to beat if you just played the gameplay segments and skipped the cutscenes, but was around 20+ hours long if you didn't). The controls were awful for the first three games (I found part 3 to be totally unplayable due to the clunky controls, ie: actions requiring 3 more button presses than they need to), which was thankfully fixed in part 4. Part 4 did a lot of great things gameplay wise, then they basically ended the fun stealth shooter game they'd created at the end of chapter 2 and turned it into another shitty awkward stealth game.

The cool things the game had going for them are crazy meta elements that constantly break the 4th wall, and some innovative stealth gameplay when you're not actively fighting the camera and clunky controls. If you're a 14 year old Japanese boy & like stupid anime storylines you'll probably think the storylines are thought-provoking and 'deep', if you've ever enjoyed quality cinema, literature, television, or one of the 4 videogames that has a good plot/characters, though, you won't be fooled by these steaming dung heaps you have to button mash through to play the game. The stories of the games are good for a videogame because the bar is set so incredibly low. They're not good on their own as stories though, they're actually quite goofy & stupid.

tl;dr just download Chaos Theory instead and have fun.

lol wow.

I thought it was blatant in terms of cheesines, especially for MGS2 and 3...i mean for fuck's sake, MGS3 was practically screaming James Bond spy b-movie...but that's why I loved it.

I don't get where these people are that take it "seriously", like playing an MGS game is like reading Anna Karenina or War and Peace. It's action, cheesy b-dialog and character acting, stealth, occasional gunfights. But again, moments like The End sniper duel, has to be one of the pinnacles of gaming history.

Though I do agree that often times the control scheme sucked.

  On 9/2/2012 at 12:49 AM, autopilot said:

Open world Metal Gear... Walk for 15 minutes to find objective -> Watch 2 hours of cutscene

hahah

  On 9/28/2012 at 7:13 PM, Smettingham Rutherford IV said:

the collection is alone worth the price for experiencing the boss fight with The End.

 

 

I don't think I will ever have a better gaming experience.

I think my favourite from Snake Eater is probably The Sorrow.

I bought the HD collection and my 6 hours spent with metal gear solid 2 ranks highly among my worst gaming experiences. I really tried to like it, but wtf. Not even going to touch the other ones.

Is this shit ever coming out?

  On 1/12/2015 at 10:10 PM, doublename said:

Is this shit ever coming out?

Ground Zeroes is out... Unless you're referring to The Phantom Pain, which should be coming out within a few months.

Shit you're right, I even bought that fuckery. I did mean Phantom Pain after all.