The meltdown was good comedy, but I just don't get it. This isn't the first game to throw decoys at you (there's at least one in Bloodborne, and I remember talk of one from Dark Souls) nor the first one to tuck its final boss within a One Weird Trick type mechanic that's never applicable to the rest of the game. Like Dan, I intuitively knew that if they focused fire on the main bad guy it'd all be gravy for them just from the context of that mission. You're likely beat to hell by the time you get to that room and there's only one enemy in there when the encounter starts.
The spawning of those other enemies is pure psychological warfare on the part of the developers. You could respond with despair and hopelessness at the amount of enemies on screen and the smallness of the encounter space, you could (apparently, according to other comments) just hopelessly wail away at the minions as they keep refreshing, or you could focus fire on the original enemy and hope for the best.
Funnily enough, if those enemies had been actual concerns and you did need to clear the room as in every other encounter in the game, I would have been furious, and not in an indignantly fun way like Alex was. I think that the way they designed this encounter is actually enthusiastically good game design, and the pure stress of a three hour XCOM session co-piloted by Daredevil Dave Ryckert just broke Alex's Will and didn't allow him to see past his exhausted disbelief that it was all over with the snap of a finger.
It's especially true if you consider the fact that players could stumble into that final arena with just one or two characters remaining in their squad. If they were running a Ironman play on a harder difficulty, it would be incredibly mean of Firaxis to design a final encounter that was basically un-winnable in that situation.
Its interesting to hear Dan talk about Metal Gear Solid V being one of his least favourite mainline MG games as I've been watching Metal Gear Scanlon where he says its the best action game he has ever played, its in the top 10 games of all time and he thought it was the best Metal Gear game ever made.
Similar to Dan, a lot of my enjoyment of Metal Gear Solid comes from the story, and while I think MGSV holds true to MGS in terms of gameplay experimentation, breath of options, and just the way it approaches design, it absolutely flounders on the storytelling aspect.
I think it can certainly be one of the best stealth action games in a decade, and certainly the best playing Metal Gear game, and still be disappointing from a fans viewpoint.
mgs5 is the perfect Metal Gear game for people who hate the story of Metal Gear (i.e. me)
Can we PLEASE stop using the term Rogue-Like/Rogue-Lite? Most people have no clue what Rogue is, and have never played it, and the people who do know (Like me) think it really doesn't define the genre that well to begin with. I bet you 95% of people who use that term have never even seen Rogue. We as a people need to come up with a better term/genre for games like these.
I don't think a genre team that has been around for about 10 years now will go away; when you say it, people know what you're (in general) referring to. It doesn't matter what the origin of the genre name was, or whether that origin makes sense.
This looks absolutely terrible. The aesthetic is so played out, and as someone else said, feels overwhelming. The UI is one of the worst I have ever seen.
@sil3n7: I agree with Austin, personally. The game marketed itself in one specific way and did not deliver on that at all. I believe that should factor into the review.
The story is poor, the narrative is poor, the dialogue is poor - those all work into the same criticism.
I've liked the story, the narrative has been fine for me, and the dialogue has been ok to hilarious for me.
valeo's comments