Kojima is the video game equivalent to those 70's/80's movie "classics" your middle aged father shows you that turn out to be the most unbearable pieces of cinema you've ever seen. Kojima's storytelling and writing consistently receiving universal acclaim is a testament to how low standards for video games are.
Literal hours are spent not developing any character. The story is barely coherent, more focused on hammering in information about the premise you've already been told about in great detail 5 times over. Connective tissue and leads between scenes are so loose the game literally stops to recap how every event in the last hour and a half is connected because they seemingly knew how weak and unmemorable each scene was. Very little actually happens for major chunks...And when things DO start picking up, they actually slow down. Instead of building emotional connections and stakes naturally throughout the course of the story -- it waits until there's time sensitive urgency to ruin with droning, unengaging, one sided info dumps telling you why you should care about what's happening.
I've always been critical of Kojima games but I went into this one thinking his style may lend itself well to a point and click adventure game, only to find even this genre's gameplay is too much for him. Tedious and repetitive, performing the same 2 actions of look and investigate ad nauseam until you get enough dry flavor text for the game to let you move on. Beyond that there's shooting mechanics that get a grand total of maybe 2 minutes playtime in the entire game. Any moment that uses said shooting has to over-telegraph the encounter, killing any tension they may have built up. Which is a shame because if this game does anything well it's having some good vibes and atmosphere in a few scenes.
Under a different director I think there's a lot of potential here for a tense point and click adventure, with an engaging mystery-focused plot. But, we're stuck with Kojima, who's idea of being cinematic is 30 minute exposition dumps combined with almost NO animation whatsoever for almost the entire game. In fact one of the only things in the entire game that's animated is a female dancer in a bikini, so that shows where the priorities lie here.
I already don't agree with Kojima's approach of ignoring the gameplay in favor of "cinematic" storytelling. I think it's a complete waste and insult of the medium to basically say for a video game to have a good movie-quality story you have to just make a movie and not a video game. BUT if the story was actually good, there'd be something to get out of it and enjoy. I'm a firm believer in judging something for what it set out to do rather than what you want it to be. So even if I
prefer a different approach, I try to meet a game halfway and keep an open mind to its direction. With that said, as a movie this game is horribly written and derivative at absolute best even for its time, and that's really all there is to say about it.
Literal hours are spent not developing any character. The story is barely coherent, more focused on hammering in information about the premise you've already been told about in great detail 5 times over. Connective tissue and leads between scenes are so loose the game literally stops to recap how every event in the last hour and a half is connected because they seemingly knew how weak and unmemorable each scene was. Very little actually happens for major chunks...And when things DO start picking up, they actually slow down. Instead of building emotional connections and stakes naturally throughout the course of the story -- it waits until there's time sensitive urgency to ruin with droning, unengaging, one sided info dumps telling you why you should care about what's happening.
I've always been critical of Kojima games but I went into this one thinking his style may lend itself well to a point and click adventure game, only to find even this genre's gameplay is too much for him. Tedious and repetitive, performing the same 2 actions of look and investigate ad nauseam until you get enough dry flavor text for the game to let you move on. Beyond that there's shooting mechanics that get a grand total of maybe 2 minutes playtime in the entire game. Any moment that uses said shooting has to over-telegraph the encounter, killing any tension they may have built up. Which is a shame because if this game does anything well it's having some good vibes and atmosphere in a few scenes.
Under a different director I think there's a lot of potential here for a tense point and click adventure, with an engaging mystery-focused plot. But, we're stuck with Kojima, who's idea of being cinematic is 30 minute exposition dumps combined with almost NO animation whatsoever for almost the entire game. In fact one of the only things in the entire game that's animated is a female dancer in a bikini, so that shows where the priorities lie here.
I already don't agree with Kojima's approach of ignoring the gameplay in favor of "cinematic" storytelling. I think it's a complete waste and insult of the medium to basically say for a video game to have a good movie-quality story you have to just make a movie and not a video game. BUT if the story was actually good, there'd be something to get out of it and enjoy. I'm a firm believer in judging something for what it set out to do rather than what you want it to be. So even if I
prefer a different approach, I try to meet a game halfway and keep an open mind to its direction. With that said, as a movie this game is horribly written and derivative at absolute best even for its time, and that's really all there is to say about it.