Okay, yes, this game is cringey. No one is questioning that, lmao. It’s a gamer themed dating game based around real living people. You really don’t need to go much further than that to understand why everyone makes fun of it. But don’t worry, I’ll keep talking about it and make it all your problem too 🖤🖤🖤


First of all, I just want to say I realize that they clearly went into this game thinking this would be a funny joke of “hey, let’s make a game about ourselves.” “Yeah, hahaha you know what would be funny? If it were a dating game, you know how cheesy those can get.” “Oh, that’s perfect! We can totally poke fun at each other and the game genre at the same time!” And yes, there’s nothing wrong with that in theory. But then you actually sit down and play the game and realize you’re playing a high school dating simulator where you play as a high school girl who is interested in the other high school boys. Except they’re based on 30-year old men, still acting and looking like the 30-year old men they’re based off of, and the cherry on top is one eventually getting into a scandal about whether or not he was sexting with high school aged girls. So yeah, I’m going to find this game incredibly creepy. It’s like watching Grease, where all the high schoolers are so clearly adult men and women, but you have to sit and pretend they’re all 17. Except in addition to that, they’re all epic gamers, a few of which you can argue have some pretty questionable morals. (Though I won’t act like any of the actors in Grease didn’t either lol)

The game still has the qualities that dating visual novels have, and there’s a clear talent put into the UI and art. I don’t want the idea of the game being “cringe” to be anything involving the art or music department or anything like that, it's just when you decide to make a dating game about real people, even if it’s supposed to be a joke, it’s going to be freaking weird. It’s especially going to be weird when the game ends up focusing on specifically Normal Boots people. So bluntly put, that’s what I think about the game. It’s a weird and uncomfortable premise for a game, so as a result I think that the game is weird and uncomfortable.

The game ended amazingly for me though, with it crashing hours in: perfectly encapsulating the spirit of the whole experience.

I don't know if I've ever played a game where the moment-to-moment play is so perfectly crafted and fine tuned, and everything else around it is just an absolute mess.

The core gameplay is so satisfying, maybe the best feeling game to play ever. The controls are so smooth. Despite the complicated array of moves, items, and weapons that have to be mapped to the controller, there's no confusion or difficulty in executing any of it. Snake and his animations are so snappy and reactive. Few things in gaming feel as cool as Snake's sprint and dive. The Reflex Mode also never gets old even after 100 hours. Every time I pulled off a last second slow-mo headshot from a mile away to avoid getting spotted, I felt like a super soldier.

Just running around taking down outposts and completing the context and plot free "Side Ops" is the best part of this game.

But literally everything else around that is a mess, it's hard to know where to start.

Mother Base as a location is absolutely wasted. It's so cool going there the first time, seeing this massive intricate steel architecture, knowing you're going to build it up with Ocelot and Kaz, and staff it with your own private army, but you very quickly learn there's nothing to do there. Genuinely, you could play this entire game and never once go there of your own volition.

That's partly because for some reason you can't actually manage Mother Base while at Mother Base. The helicopter ACC is where you actually have full access to all your base management, weapon customization, and other menus for some reason. Having to leave Mother Base so you can access the menus exclusively about Mother Base is just confusing and backwards and completely eliminates any reason to actually go there.

But I guess none of that matters since the base management basically runs itself and has next to no noticeable impact on what you're doing as long as you recruit the occasional guy during a mission and grab the resources that are lying in your path. The idea is that you need to pay attention to this stuff to maximize your weapon and buddy development but there are too many weapons and most of them are just interchangeable copies of one another with the most miniscule stat differences.

The open world could be an interesting concept but the first map is just a series of canyon corridors channeling you from one bad guy outpost to the next with nothing to do in between and the other is a mostly flat open space with nothing to do as you travel between enemy outposts. So besides those outposts there are only a small handful of actually crafted levels and none of them have any majorly interesting moments or staying power.

The saving grace could have been the story because there are so many cool ideas here. Snake's phantom, the return of Volgin, Eli, Psycho Mantis and others, the extremely potent politics around the vocal parasites, the imminent end to the Cold War and emergence of the other MGS games' geopolitical atmosphere. There's a lot going on here, but none of it is properly developed or given the focus and attention it needs. Most characters only get a couple of cutscenes and some audio logs before disappearing.

The major new character Skull Face only gets a few proper scenes before he's killed in a cutscene in an accident of his own causing. Out of all the characters, Quiet has the most interesting internal conflicts and decisions, and she doesn't even get to speak. Not to mention the gross sexualization of her that happens in literally every one of her scenes. There's no tension or build up to anything in the story save for some rare scenes that highlight Snake and Kaz.

I actually really like the twist of having the player literally becoming Big Boss in the very meta way Kojima does things, but it's so immediately obvious from the very start of the game that when it finally gets revealed 100 hours in it's no surprise. Not to mention, that since every mission begins with credits listing the featured characters, the final mission lists Big Boss and Venom Snake separately right at the start, before forcing you to play the dreadfully slow opening level again before making the big reveal an hour later.

There's maybe 10 hours worth of story and main missions here, but it's padded out to 100 hours. Most of the supposed "Main Missions" have no bearing on anything. Just basic "go here, kill him/blow up this/rescue them" stuff that could absolutely be side missions.

The last half in particular is just a massive waste of time. After killing the main baddie, the game then forces you to replay missions from the first half complete with cutscenes and tutorials you've already gone through, but with annoyingly difficult restrictions placed on top. This is the worst kind of padding, stringing out the last few cutscenes over another 15-20 hours of the worst gameplay in the entire experience.

Nothing like 20 hours of unnecessary frustrating padding to make you sour on a game at the end.

One of the most baffling, frustrating games I've ever played. It feels like Kojima and team spent so much time on the core gameplay loop, that none of the story segments or missions got any attention until it was too late to properly flesh it out and incorporate it into the game. So what you're left with is one of the best playing games in years stuck inside a shoddy frame of useless mechanics and practically nonexistent story.

Maybe the most wasted potential I've ever seen in a videogame.

"Bustin' makes me feel good"

The End of Ghostbusters

Ghostbusters when it is bustin

Bustin, on your Wii