this is a silent hill 2 type game where it's become so thoroughly analyzed, so heavily entrenched in video games discussion and culture, so deeply "canonized", that it feels trite to write anything new about it. the bar for entry for a worthwhile piece on this is so high, that it just feels like a pointless exercise, i presume outside of just serving as a stream of conscious diary as a means to unravel my own thoughts. because outside of that, what is there to say that hasn't already been said a million times in a million ways?

it's good! very good! probably not perfect, the stealth gameplay doesn't have enough differences from mgs1 to not make keeping your eye locked to the top right of the screen for 80% of the game the optimal way to play it, and the constant backtracking in the first half is annoying as hell. i'm still not particularly convinced on "stealth games" as a concept (the most i have been convinced was hitman 3, which is maybe just because there's so many systems and ways to approach anything that you can direct it the way you want and ignore everything you don't want to do). in some ways this gets closer to what I want with mechanisms like tranq darts you actually want to use and first person aiming (both very welcome additions), but then it undoes that with the very aggressive search parties and their generally ridiculous cooldown times. like, i know this is to discourage being found, but i think it goes too far, and i often found myself just running into enemies trying to die & respawn the second i was spotted. spending 20 seconds getting shot at and respawning is often a more preferable outcome than sitting in some corner or vent or cabinet for over a minute, wasting ammo and health if you get caught, all of which feels like a misstep in player direction. maybe this is because i played it on too hard of a difficulty for my own personal enjoyment, but I played on normal, so, like, whatever. i am realizing though that although i'm deeply fascinated by how kojima writes, i'm not generally enthralled by his gameplay systems, so i'm probably going to have to get over my inner "normal is the intended experience and either direction is a compromise" and just play future MGS games on easier modes where they exist.

as far as narrative, yep, it's good, but you don't need me to tell you that. being light with specifics here since it's probably experienced best without knowing in advance everything it's planning to do (and as previously stated, i dont think i could give a read on this that wouldn't be better expressed by a million other essays), but obviously pretty much everything from the back half is stellar and really retroactively makes the first half much better than just being ok. the story goofiness seems to be remarked on a lot, but even if i prefer the more all-out flavors of something like killer7 or southland tales more, i think it's fine that it's in here. if you know anything about my preferences i'm a huge fan of wild tonal shifts, so even though i'm not huge on the parts here that resemble a schlocky action movie, i can appreciate their existence causing the more heart-to-heart moments to stand out more. one thing i didnt expect though is the complete absence of a desire to play metal gear rising lol, why do we need more raiden and why does it need to be more epic funny flashy action. i'm sure theres more, but the way that game gets sold makes it seem like its gotta be built off of a complete misreading of the text here lol, but whatever, that's a side tangent.

it does suck how much of this game has leaked out into the internet, making it one of the first games to join the ranks of "lots of the best scenes have been spoiled by default by memes" where itd later be joined by stuff like undertale, just a shame when that happens really. so many audio clips that are heard best in the context of this game, regurgitated through "top 10 craziest video game moments" videos and videos titled things like "this game PREDICTED the internet..." maybe there's something to be said about the internet itself preserving all the minutia of this game, and constantly bombarding anyone remotely interested in video games with it, but i'm not smart enough to do more than a vague gesture towards it and go "wow just like some of the themes that are explored in this game!"

looking forward, i'm still definitely going to play mgs3, excited since i know a lot less about it, and my further figuring out that i like kojima's stories but not so much his gameplay has made me even more curious to try his 90s ADVs snatcher and policenauts. i first touched the metal gear series by playing like 15 hours of mgsv when i was like 14 and tapping out not even that far in when i got to some tank mission that was too hard or something, so i feel like im gonna be happy to finally loop back around with that one eventually probably in quite a while, even if i have noticed that people do kinda put the first 3 mgs games on a pedastal above the rest of the series. its been said a million times before but kojima really did change how video game narratives get done, and its funny to see criticisms that they're too much like movies when it seems like one of his main hallmarks is weird robust & innovative gameplay systems lol, and still being one of the only game storytellers that can actually tie those two halves together with any degree of competency or originality