This review contains spoilers
This is gonna come out very shoddily written, but I just wanna vomit my thoughts somewhere. Probably the saddest four-star rating I've ever given, Metroid Prime is a game that I have been waiting to play for a long time and, despite it being great, fell a bit short of my expectations for it. Being a huge 2D Metroid fan and just a videogame enthusiast in general, I was unbelieveably excited when the announcement for this dropped, specially since I had tried the GameCube version, didn't quite dig the controls, and told myself "I'll play it when they re-release the Trilogy on the Switch." The Trilogy wasn't re-released, but, holy cow, what a remaster! This might just be the best looking videogame on the Switch, and it would be awesome just for it to look like this, but it also runs at silky smooth 60fps. Incredible. My first impressions of the game were fantastic, but I was less impressed as the game went on. The first 3/4 of the game are very fun. Though the settings and the visuals are incredible, the puzzles are nice and the level design is honestly near-genius, the game can pad quite a bit. The exploration is cool, but being a Metroid game, it rightfully requires backtracking. However, the backtracking on this game gets worse and worse the more you dig in. Switching weapons to opening different doors is a hassle, and I don't understand why they couldn't have just mimicked the way of the 2D games, where you use a certain weapon for a certain door the first time, then you can use it with any weapon. While in 2D games Samus is fast and slick, she feels heavier and clunkier here. I liked this in the beginning, because it makes Samus feel bulkier, but it also makes her feel soooo sloooowwww... The worst thing about backtracking: the annoying enemies, always on you, spongy as hell, sometimes unavoidable. The moment I thought I had collected all the Artifacts and then realized I had to come back to the Phazon Mines to return for the last one which I had forgot, I didn't pick up the game for two days. Lastly, I found the Meta Ridley boss fight quite boring, and the Metroid Prime one a bit gimmicky, though the True Metroid Prime bit with the Hypermode was awesome. In the end, this neither left me with the impression I was playing a masterpiece, like Resident Evil 4 did (a game that received similar amounts of critic praise and released for the same console original), nor did it strike me personally as strongly as Metroid Fusion or Super Metroid did, for example. I'm honestly just sad I didn't enjoy it as much as every one else seems to have. I'm not so hyped for Metroid Prime 2/3 or 4 when it releases - I hope I'm proven wrong. Overall it's a great game though, and I'm glad Metroid is more alive than ever; I just wanted to vent my end-game nitpicks here.
1999
Art design and graphics OOZE charm and creativity, specially those illustrations you get in the cutscenes. However, the gameplay is a bit braindead; with infinite continues and little offensive variety it feels a bit lacking... Still overall very polished, and hard to get tired of since it only lasts about 40 minutes.
2008
Beautiful fucking videogame. Accidentally I had dropped it like a minute before the ending, lol, I hadn't played this for months, I opened it and I finished it. Story is just serviceable, but it's completely compensated by its INCREDIBLE VISUALS AND GAMEPLAY. This is a memorable one, folks
Sonic 3 & Knuckles is one of the first games I remember playing, ever. I remember asking of the older guys in my incredibly small, rural Portuguese village to "put a Sonic videogame in my computer" after seeing an ad for a Sonic videogame in a magazine back then. This must've been back in 2010, 2011 - I was 8 or 9 - and I don't remember what specific game the ad was for, but the dude downloaded Sonic Mega Collection Plus onto my small Packard Bell laptop, along with Puzzle Bobble and Metal Slug bundled with the MAME emulator, and I spent most of the time playing on my computer circling through the first levels of those videogames.
I don't really understand people who say they beat games as kids; maybe it makes more sense if you had a console and your parents bought one specific game that you asked for (as it was the case with my 2DS and Pokémon X - I beat it!), but my parents barely ever gave me money for anything, let alone videogames, except for, I think, one or two instances. So, for me, it was mainly flash games, hacked Pokémon ROMs in VisualBoyAdvance, and pirated games that may or may not have not contaminated my poor and already slow little computer with adware and malware more than once.
But I digress. My memories of Sonic are mainly from the original classic trilogy, whose first levels I beat over and over again. I don't quite remember why, but with Sonic 3 and Knuckles, I have more memories from Mushroom Hill Zone than Angel Island Zone - I don't know if I triggered something to play Sonic and Knuckles instead of Sonic 3, but it must've been something like it. I liked bouncing around on the mushrooms, I thought the things that trapped you unless you spindashed your way out of their grip were annoying, and I was surprised to see Knuckles being evil.
That more or less sums up my experience with the game until I tried Sonic 3 A.I.R. I played a borrowed copy of Sonic Rivals 2 on my PSP, whose UMD broke and only the disk inside remains now, in one of my old closets. It was cool. In my early teen years, my gaming life was basically just Pokémon; later on, I explored more games and acquired tastes for different, less mainstream franchises, and I just mostly didn't think about Sonic. When I tried playing a Sonic game, I just didn't get the appeal. Sonic went fast, but I couldn't just press forward because I would bump into obstacles (like in the first few levels)? What the fuck? Where's the fun in this? I wanted to speed though everything without a second thought. The levels were confusing, there were just way too many obstacles going on. I just thought it was boring and, with the abundance of videogames to play, I didn't find any reason to press on. I remember Sonic Mania coming out, me installing it, and not feeling any particular feelings towards the game.
I mostly installed this out of curiosity, since it has such phenomenal reviews on Backloggd. I like fan made ports, localizations, videogame labors of love in general, even if I don't personally harbor an interest in the franchises or the like. I like messing around with this stuff. I recently patched a ROM of Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere with the localization overhaul by Load Word Team, Just In Case I Ever Want To Play It™. Hence, I booted A.I.R., "just to see how it ran", I thought.
It ran beautifully. The game is incredible.
I was incredibly, pleasantly surprised to have a Sonic game finally "click" for me. First off, the port is obviously gorgeous and shows off an outstanding level of polish - Eukaryot clearly deeply loves the game, and they have my kudos. I'm glad that I ended having my "definitive" experience with such a spotless version of Sonic 3. Secondly, this is a fantastic videogame, full stop. Sonic 3 & Knuckles truly feels like a complete package, if that makes sense. In my experience with it, I don't think I felt like anything was missing or left the game craving any more levels or bosses or whatever - it's very densely packed with quality gameplay, setpieces, tunes (some composed by Michael Jackson, I hear?) boss fights, and all very nicely wrapped up in a little bow. As I paced through the first levels, I thought to myself: "wow, how did I NOT see the appeal of this before?"
Generally speaking, in videogames, you either choose to speed through a gameplay segment, or take your time exploring it to catch anything you might otherwise miss. But, in Sonic, exploration rewards you not just with knowledge about the level but, with it, the ability to more gracefully speed through it afterwards. The levels are sprawling in verticality, almost labyrinthic, and full of nooks and crannies with special stages and powerups. This might be a superficial analysis of "the point" of classic Sonic's gameplay loop, but realizing this by myself was key to be able to interpret the level layouts and the game itself as a little puzzle to be slowly deciphered and put together while bouncing around, instead of a mindless sidescrolling pseudo-racing track.
I like the variety of Sonic sprites in the game, be it with him ducking, sprinting, rotating horizontally, vertically. That combined with the very good physics and some smart visual tricks makes for some real kinetic and dynamic gameplay. The opening of the Ice Cap Zone, for example, is hard as hell. Game's colorful and spritework is very good, and the sometimes almost abstract aesthetics of some levels like Marble Gallery or Carnival Night are a real treat to the eyes. I very much enjoyed the differences and gimmicks each level has to offer. I feel like Sonic Team really made the most out of what they could with the Mega Drive hardware. Level design is super solid, too - I don't understand too much about Sonic level design or level design in general, but I was never bored. I giggled a bit when I realized falling in Ice Cap looped into itself and I was waiting with my controller in my hand for nothing. My friend told me about the infamous Carnival Night barrel (I would've not figured it out otherwise). The Mushroom Hill bouncy mushrooms, levers and wind are awesome, the drifting sand and ropes in Sandopolis are awesome, Hidden Palace is gorgeous, etc. The game consistently stays pretty, varied, fresh, interesting, and the I thought the Blue Sphere Special Stages were super nice, as well.
The only level that I didn't enjoy as much, and whose difficult I felt was unbalanced compared to the rest, was Death Egg. Obviously, I know that the last level in a videogame is supposed to be a culmination of the difficulty in it, but I genuinely felt like it was a huge spike compared to the rest - probably about one third of my play time is just me hitting my head against Death Egg over and over again. It got to a point where I was one click away from deleting the game and marking it as dropped, which frustrated me immensely; this was being a great experience, this made Sonic click for me, so far the game was being so nicely executed in just about every aspect I could think of, why the hell was I getting stuck Now, so close to the end? Plus, I just hate dropping games just as I'm about to finish them. Uugh. Anyway, this level has some seriously frustrating elements. The enemies are the toughest and guys like Spikebonker (lol) can seriously kill you a few times if you don't pay attention to where you're going. It also has several sections where your movement is controlled by some sort of platform, like the light rights or the mechanical caterpillars, which makes progressing slower. And the bosses are a test to your endurance and to your patience. In the last one, where Eggman shoots you with a laser, if you die, you respawn with 0 rings, and get instakilled at the slightest mistake. It's frustrating.
And just as I was about to drop the videogame, one of my friends urges me to try one last time. I open the game and, with only a single death, I complete the level. I... beat it? I don't see many more people complaining about Death Egg. Maybe I was just mentally stuck...? Weird.
Anyway, I complete the game. As a treat, I try Doomsday Zone, which has just the right amount of space bravado for the actually-this-is-the-last-level level. I think my Sonic curiosity has been satisfied for a while, but I'm definitely checking out titles like Sonic CD and Sonic Mania Plus in the future. Please play this videogame, even if you've never understood the appeal of Sonic before, or have played other Sonic videogames but didn't enjoy them so much. I believe you're definitely going to enjoy it!!
I don't really understand people who say they beat games as kids; maybe it makes more sense if you had a console and your parents bought one specific game that you asked for (as it was the case with my 2DS and Pokémon X - I beat it!), but my parents barely ever gave me money for anything, let alone videogames, except for, I think, one or two instances. So, for me, it was mainly flash games, hacked Pokémon ROMs in VisualBoyAdvance, and pirated games that may or may not have not contaminated my poor and already slow little computer with adware and malware more than once.
But I digress. My memories of Sonic are mainly from the original classic trilogy, whose first levels I beat over and over again. I don't quite remember why, but with Sonic 3 and Knuckles, I have more memories from Mushroom Hill Zone than Angel Island Zone - I don't know if I triggered something to play Sonic and Knuckles instead of Sonic 3, but it must've been something like it. I liked bouncing around on the mushrooms, I thought the things that trapped you unless you spindashed your way out of their grip were annoying, and I was surprised to see Knuckles being evil.
That more or less sums up my experience with the game until I tried Sonic 3 A.I.R. I played a borrowed copy of Sonic Rivals 2 on my PSP, whose UMD broke and only the disk inside remains now, in one of my old closets. It was cool. In my early teen years, my gaming life was basically just Pokémon; later on, I explored more games and acquired tastes for different, less mainstream franchises, and I just mostly didn't think about Sonic. When I tried playing a Sonic game, I just didn't get the appeal. Sonic went fast, but I couldn't just press forward because I would bump into obstacles (like in the first few levels)? What the fuck? Where's the fun in this? I wanted to speed though everything without a second thought. The levels were confusing, there were just way too many obstacles going on. I just thought it was boring and, with the abundance of videogames to play, I didn't find any reason to press on. I remember Sonic Mania coming out, me installing it, and not feeling any particular feelings towards the game.
I mostly installed this out of curiosity, since it has such phenomenal reviews on Backloggd. I like fan made ports, localizations, videogame labors of love in general, even if I don't personally harbor an interest in the franchises or the like. I like messing around with this stuff. I recently patched a ROM of Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere with the localization overhaul by Load Word Team, Just In Case I Ever Want To Play It™. Hence, I booted A.I.R., "just to see how it ran", I thought.
It ran beautifully. The game is incredible.
I was incredibly, pleasantly surprised to have a Sonic game finally "click" for me. First off, the port is obviously gorgeous and shows off an outstanding level of polish - Eukaryot clearly deeply loves the game, and they have my kudos. I'm glad that I ended having my "definitive" experience with such a spotless version of Sonic 3. Secondly, this is a fantastic videogame, full stop. Sonic 3 & Knuckles truly feels like a complete package, if that makes sense. In my experience with it, I don't think I felt like anything was missing or left the game craving any more levels or bosses or whatever - it's very densely packed with quality gameplay, setpieces, tunes (some composed by Michael Jackson, I hear?) boss fights, and all very nicely wrapped up in a little bow. As I paced through the first levels, I thought to myself: "wow, how did I NOT see the appeal of this before?"
Generally speaking, in videogames, you either choose to speed through a gameplay segment, or take your time exploring it to catch anything you might otherwise miss. But, in Sonic, exploration rewards you not just with knowledge about the level but, with it, the ability to more gracefully speed through it afterwards. The levels are sprawling in verticality, almost labyrinthic, and full of nooks and crannies with special stages and powerups. This might be a superficial analysis of "the point" of classic Sonic's gameplay loop, but realizing this by myself was key to be able to interpret the level layouts and the game itself as a little puzzle to be slowly deciphered and put together while bouncing around, instead of a mindless sidescrolling pseudo-racing track.
I like the variety of Sonic sprites in the game, be it with him ducking, sprinting, rotating horizontally, vertically. That combined with the very good physics and some smart visual tricks makes for some real kinetic and dynamic gameplay. The opening of the Ice Cap Zone, for example, is hard as hell. Game's colorful and spritework is very good, and the sometimes almost abstract aesthetics of some levels like Marble Gallery or Carnival Night are a real treat to the eyes. I very much enjoyed the differences and gimmicks each level has to offer. I feel like Sonic Team really made the most out of what they could with the Mega Drive hardware. Level design is super solid, too - I don't understand too much about Sonic level design or level design in general, but I was never bored. I giggled a bit when I realized falling in Ice Cap looped into itself and I was waiting with my controller in my hand for nothing. My friend told me about the infamous Carnival Night barrel (I would've not figured it out otherwise). The Mushroom Hill bouncy mushrooms, levers and wind are awesome, the drifting sand and ropes in Sandopolis are awesome, Hidden Palace is gorgeous, etc. The game consistently stays pretty, varied, fresh, interesting, and the I thought the Blue Sphere Special Stages were super nice, as well.
The only level that I didn't enjoy as much, and whose difficult I felt was unbalanced compared to the rest, was Death Egg. Obviously, I know that the last level in a videogame is supposed to be a culmination of the difficulty in it, but I genuinely felt like it was a huge spike compared to the rest - probably about one third of my play time is just me hitting my head against Death Egg over and over again. It got to a point where I was one click away from deleting the game and marking it as dropped, which frustrated me immensely; this was being a great experience, this made Sonic click for me, so far the game was being so nicely executed in just about every aspect I could think of, why the hell was I getting stuck Now, so close to the end? Plus, I just hate dropping games just as I'm about to finish them. Uugh. Anyway, this level has some seriously frustrating elements. The enemies are the toughest and guys like Spikebonker (lol) can seriously kill you a few times if you don't pay attention to where you're going. It also has several sections where your movement is controlled by some sort of platform, like the light rights or the mechanical caterpillars, which makes progressing slower. And the bosses are a test to your endurance and to your patience. In the last one, where Eggman shoots you with a laser, if you die, you respawn with 0 rings, and get instakilled at the slightest mistake. It's frustrating.
And just as I was about to drop the videogame, one of my friends urges me to try one last time. I open the game and, with only a single death, I complete the level. I... beat it? I don't see many more people complaining about Death Egg. Maybe I was just mentally stuck...? Weird.
Anyway, I complete the game. As a treat, I try Doomsday Zone, which has just the right amount of space bravado for the actually-this-is-the-last-level level. I think my Sonic curiosity has been satisfied for a while, but I'm definitely checking out titles like Sonic CD and Sonic Mania Plus in the future. Please play this videogame, even if you've never understood the appeal of Sonic before, or have played other Sonic videogames but didn't enjoy them so much. I believe you're definitely going to enjoy it!!
2023
I wanna play this for hours all the time
I've barely properly sunk my teeth in this game, but it was nothing short of amazing to finally feel a "classic" fighting game click with me, mechanically. After years of being a Smash player, lol. Stylistically it's also nothing short of absolutely incredible. I'm slowly becoming obsessed with it
Update 30/06/2023: I beat it. Gill is bullshit. This game rocks
Update 30/06/2023: I beat it. Gill is bullshit. This game rocks
2016
Truly mediocre videogame, but one made with lots of love. Fun to spend an evening with friends on Discord. Level design is extremely boring and game is extremely easy even on the hardest difficulties. Spritework is OK. I quite like the portrait artworks, though. It really has a certain kind of charm to it. The people who made it clearly enjoyed the process.
2020
It's easy to fool people into thinking you're a competent game when you have an engine with premade assets and flashy lighting doing most of the work for you. The only good things in this game are the cool sword animations and the marginally okay mechanics already executed far better in games that came before (play Titanfall 2!), but even those are not so polished at times. Comically awful, soulless writing that I probably could not have executed worse if I had tried, one of the (if not The) most generic takes on the cyberpunk aesthetic I've ever seen. The difficulty is nice, but the level design isn't too interesting, and it sure as hell isn't going to be the story that motivates me to play this. And what's with the random braindead puzzles? Before this, I had a resolution of finishing more games that I started, but I realized this really makes no sense when you're forcing yourself to play mediocrity. Avoid!
Great videogame that somewhat resparked my interest in videogames with its simplicity. There is nothing about the traversal that hasn't been said yet, but I'd like to mention how good it is one more time before moving on to the rest.
Things I liked:
- Presentation is superb, with high production values. Beating this in my shiny new computer was glorious. NYC looks amazing especially in the afternoon and at night, the fights look awesome and colorful, and there are loads of pretty nice shots.
- Combat is very satisfying. Gadgets are fucking awesome, and I consider returning to this someday just to toy around with the trip mines in the bases I didn't clear. I loved the finishers and the dodging too.
- Variety of suits is really nice! I enjoyed playing various segments of the game with different suits
- Acting is quite good, the ending sequence is fantastic. Story is much more serviceable than I initially expected. Otto knowing about Peter after all actually caught me off guard, I thought he was just very naïve, but I was the naïve one after all, heheh. I enjoyed Parker's character a lot, particularly how Insomniac was not afraid to make him suffer. I think Spider-Man's overall tough life is the thing that makes him such a loveable and relatable character, and he is constantly taking an emotional beating for the most part of this game lol
Things I disliked:
- HUGE AMOUNTS OF COPAGANDA. JESUS
- Higher difficulty just drags out the game for no real reason - on the highest difficulty, I wasn't dying at all nor I had to rethink the way I was playing, but the enemies sure took their sweet time to die. This made me slightly demotivated to play the game. If you play it, set the difficulty to the lowest one and just enjoy the ride as a cinematic thing
- Mary Jane gameplay segments were somewhat boring
- Martin Li just kind of... fades out of the plot? No closure at all. Despite being decent, the story has this veil of... triple A blandness to it.
I enjoyed it overall, and I hadn't beat a videogame this long (although Spider-Man can be considered kind of short speaking in overall videogame standards lol) in quite a while. Here's to hoping I'll play more videogames in 2023 :)
Things I liked:
- Presentation is superb, with high production values. Beating this in my shiny new computer was glorious. NYC looks amazing especially in the afternoon and at night, the fights look awesome and colorful, and there are loads of pretty nice shots.
- Combat is very satisfying. Gadgets are fucking awesome, and I consider returning to this someday just to toy around with the trip mines in the bases I didn't clear. I loved the finishers and the dodging too.
- Variety of suits is really nice! I enjoyed playing various segments of the game with different suits
- Acting is quite good, the ending sequence is fantastic. Story is much more serviceable than I initially expected. Otto knowing about Peter after all actually caught me off guard, I thought he was just very naïve, but I was the naïve one after all, heheh. I enjoyed Parker's character a lot, particularly how Insomniac was not afraid to make him suffer. I think Spider-Man's overall tough life is the thing that makes him such a loveable and relatable character, and he is constantly taking an emotional beating for the most part of this game lol
Things I disliked:
- HUGE AMOUNTS OF COPAGANDA. JESUS
- Higher difficulty just drags out the game for no real reason - on the highest difficulty, I wasn't dying at all nor I had to rethink the way I was playing, but the enemies sure took their sweet time to die. This made me slightly demotivated to play the game. If you play it, set the difficulty to the lowest one and just enjoy the ride as a cinematic thing
- Mary Jane gameplay segments were somewhat boring
- Martin Li just kind of... fades out of the plot? No closure at all. Despite being decent, the story has this veil of... triple A blandness to it.
I enjoyed it overall, and I hadn't beat a videogame this long (although Spider-Man can be considered kind of short speaking in overall videogame standards lol) in quite a while. Here's to hoping I'll play more videogames in 2023 :)
2007
I legitimately love this videogame
I played Metroid: Zero Mission and Super Metroid before this, and didn't like it, but this made the Metroid games click in my mind. It's literally what gotten me into Metroid as a franchise. I wish people would start taking fangames more seriously
1998
(Review originally written in Aug 2019 when I was 17 as a Twitter thread, reposting here in Sep 2022 for archival purposes. Not at all how I would write today, but I still like it!)
I finished Metal Gear Solid! It's a very good game that aged quite well, although some of its aspects are somewhat outdated, of course. The voice acting is commendable to this day. I really, really liked the game design, full of interesting ideas, no two parts of the game were the same.
It's really interesting how today's "cinematic" games are a synonym of lack of uniqueness and interactive gameplay but Metal Gear Solid goes totally against that - while presenting an amazing narrative with a new plot twist at every Codec call, it's always a game that's fun to play as a GAME, and you never feel like you're the spectator to a movie.
Every boss battle was quite memorable and so were the characters that oozed charm. My favorites were:
- Otacon, a very charming and likeable sidekick, with good comic relief points, always helpful, with a great redemption arc at the end
- Gray Fox, a great warrior that gave me the most challenging battle of all bosses, with an interesting backstory and motives, and above all, charm
- Naomi Hunter, not only because she's very pretty and her voice is SO CUTE, but she is a very interesting character overall. I liked her monologue at the end, even if it was a bit cryptic
- Mei Ling for being adorable, reliable, and always providing good advice, even if she wasn't the most important character in the story
And Ocelot and Sniper Wolf. I really enjoyed the torture scene as ironic as it may sound, and the GAME OVER screen where Liquid says "Ocelot... you DID IT AGAIN." and Ocelot answers with "Haha... Sorry, Boss." is really nice for a change, instead of the usual taunting where your allies scream in agony. As for Sniper Wolf, she probably has my favorite quote in the game.
"I finally understand. I wasn't waiting to kill people... I was waiting for someone to kill me. A man like you..."
As for my least favorite characters in the game, they're probably the Twin Snakes, Liquid and Solid. Liquid Snake feels like a hollow, edgy villain with world domination motives sugarcoated by "inferior genetics" and his wish of revenge on... basically everyone? I didn't like him. And Solid Snake feels like a mindless government puppet, although Gray Fox tries to tell him he's not. Really, all he knows about is following orders and asking about [a specific something] immediately after [specific something] is mentioned: it can get somewhat boring, honestly.
Some final notes about my personal experience:
- I chose probably the worst way to play the game: MGS Integral for the PC with that one QoL patch. Truth is: the port is still kind of bad. It definitely looks great in 1080p, but the controls suck, your custom control settings reset randomly, FMVs NEVER play correctly, save games sometimes glitch... the list goes on. You really shouldn't play it like this, althought it's not the worst experience ever.
- This definitely had the potential to become one of my favorite games ever, but I played the game reeeally sloowly and the last part was somewhat frustrating, I definitely felt some fatigue and just wanted it all to end. Plus, the port wasn't the best, and finally, Solid and Liquid could be more interesting. Those factors keep it from being one of my all time favorite games ever.
- These are my favorite game tracks!
youtu.be/n1fWzyDVesc
youtu.be/mRSG5k86GFs
youtu.be/hnp_JgJSLoc
youtu.be/LqZVNzNc23w
youtu.be/OReM-Vm2vj4
In conclusion, the game is damn good at basically everything it tries to do, be it dialogue, level design, variety of gameplay mechanics, level of detail (for a PSX game, it's amazing!), characters, graphics, soundtrack, atmosphere, ah, I've ran out of things to compliment. I can really feel it was a revolutionary game and it deserves its place on all those "games you have to play before you die" lists. I'm super hyped for MGS2! Let's go!
Final score: 9,5/10
(I never played MGS2 lol)
I finished Metal Gear Solid! It's a very good game that aged quite well, although some of its aspects are somewhat outdated, of course. The voice acting is commendable to this day. I really, really liked the game design, full of interesting ideas, no two parts of the game were the same.
It's really interesting how today's "cinematic" games are a synonym of lack of uniqueness and interactive gameplay but Metal Gear Solid goes totally against that - while presenting an amazing narrative with a new plot twist at every Codec call, it's always a game that's fun to play as a GAME, and you never feel like you're the spectator to a movie.
Every boss battle was quite memorable and so were the characters that oozed charm. My favorites were:
- Otacon, a very charming and likeable sidekick, with good comic relief points, always helpful, with a great redemption arc at the end
- Gray Fox, a great warrior that gave me the most challenging battle of all bosses, with an interesting backstory and motives, and above all, charm
- Naomi Hunter, not only because she's very pretty and her voice is SO CUTE, but she is a very interesting character overall. I liked her monologue at the end, even if it was a bit cryptic
- Mei Ling for being adorable, reliable, and always providing good advice, even if she wasn't the most important character in the story
And Ocelot and Sniper Wolf. I really enjoyed the torture scene as ironic as it may sound, and the GAME OVER screen where Liquid says "Ocelot... you DID IT AGAIN." and Ocelot answers with "Haha... Sorry, Boss." is really nice for a change, instead of the usual taunting where your allies scream in agony. As for Sniper Wolf, she probably has my favorite quote in the game.
"I finally understand. I wasn't waiting to kill people... I was waiting for someone to kill me. A man like you..."
As for my least favorite characters in the game, they're probably the Twin Snakes, Liquid and Solid. Liquid Snake feels like a hollow, edgy villain with world domination motives sugarcoated by "inferior genetics" and his wish of revenge on... basically everyone? I didn't like him. And Solid Snake feels like a mindless government puppet, although Gray Fox tries to tell him he's not. Really, all he knows about is following orders and asking about [a specific something] immediately after [specific something] is mentioned: it can get somewhat boring, honestly.
Some final notes about my personal experience:
- I chose probably the worst way to play the game: MGS Integral for the PC with that one QoL patch. Truth is: the port is still kind of bad. It definitely looks great in 1080p, but the controls suck, your custom control settings reset randomly, FMVs NEVER play correctly, save games sometimes glitch... the list goes on. You really shouldn't play it like this, althought it's not the worst experience ever.
- This definitely had the potential to become one of my favorite games ever, but I played the game reeeally sloowly and the last part was somewhat frustrating, I definitely felt some fatigue and just wanted it all to end. Plus, the port wasn't the best, and finally, Solid and Liquid could be more interesting. Those factors keep it from being one of my all time favorite games ever.
- These are my favorite game tracks!
youtu.be/n1fWzyDVesc
youtu.be/mRSG5k86GFs
youtu.be/hnp_JgJSLoc
youtu.be/LqZVNzNc23w
youtu.be/OReM-Vm2vj4
In conclusion, the game is damn good at basically everything it tries to do, be it dialogue, level design, variety of gameplay mechanics, level of detail (for a PSX game, it's amazing!), characters, graphics, soundtrack, atmosphere, ah, I've ran out of things to compliment. I can really feel it was a revolutionary game and it deserves its place on all those "games you have to play before you die" lists. I'm super hyped for MGS2! Let's go!
Final score: 9,5/10
(I never played MGS2 lol)
tetris... but EPIC
Edit 07/10/2022: Finished this again on Expert Mode. Not to be That guy, but I felt the intensity of the music, beats, and gameplay speed changes far more here... This feels like how the game was actually meant to be played. But I always end up thinking that about games on a harder difficulty! This either means something about me, or videogame difficulty design in general... Hmm.
Edit 07/10/2022: Finished this again on Expert Mode. Not to be That guy, but I felt the intensity of the music, beats, and gameplay speed changes far more here... This feels like how the game was actually meant to be played. But I always end up thinking that about games on a harder difficulty! This either means something about me, or videogame difficulty design in general... Hmm.
2018
Perhaps a little too topical for me right now...
Great experience, good use of interactive storytelling and symbolism, pretty art and music – but its minimalistic approach to storytelling and its very short runtime (about 30 minutes) I think will fail to cause a strong, lasting impression on me. However, everything Florence does, it does just about right.
As for the ending... I'll tell you what I think of it in about five or ten years, I suppose...
Great experience, good use of interactive storytelling and symbolism, pretty art and music – but its minimalistic approach to storytelling and its very short runtime (about 30 minutes) I think will fail to cause a strong, lasting impression on me. However, everything Florence does, it does just about right.
As for the ending... I'll tell you what I think of it in about five or ten years, I suppose...
so goofy yet so hard for no reason