@fakekisser: Subsistence

I should mention though I'm pretty old school and I actually really liked the controls in MGS 1 & 2 since I was familiar with MG from the NES. So I may not be the best barometer for your tastes. I will say MGS5 controls sublimely, incredibly varied and yet very intuitive to an experienced gamer.

I think the fact the 3 tried to Westernize controls but did it very poorly (that's just my opinion not the popular opinion at the time) made it more galling for me Kinda like Uncanny Valley but with controls. It just highlighted to me where it was deficient since I was already well accustomed to how these schemes normally work. Been a really long time though (played it in 06?), my memory on it is fuzzy and potentially unfair.

MGS3 is still absolutely fantastic in my opinion. MGS and MGS4 are good but overrated. MGS2 was boring for me, I completed it after I finished MGS3. MGS5 is alright, the gameplay is certainly the most accessible.

Don't you meant 4? 3 didn't seem like it tried to "westernize" controls at all. It's just MGS2's controls + the CQC stuff. You still have to shoot with square, first person with R1 etc. Whereas 4 added the now standard left trigger/right trigger controls, and CQC was moved to fire button; which is still fairly similar to how MGSV controls.

@kasaioni: nope never played 4. Maybe I should have said camera, because I found the switch to thrid person versus overhead jarring.

sounds like 4 did a better job of westernizing the controls, and I know 5 did a great job

@slag: The camera change was also only available in the re-release; which I think makes the game better any ways. I know a lot of people disliked MGS3's original over-head MGS2-style camera because the game had no radar, so you always had to look in first person to see what was going on around you.

I definitely remember one of the positives of MGS4 being that it had better controls when it first came out. I still think people playing it for the first time today wouldn't have too much trouble with it. I think Brad mentions it in his video review which is still on the site here.

Dude, you could not have had a more polar opposite experience to the one I had.
MGS2 was the game that *sold me* on video-games. And it's almost entirely to do with its story.
Don't get me wrong, it's really messy and uses so many absurd ideas and techniques that I'm not surprised so many people were turned off but there's an incredible amount going on under the surface that seemed to comment on everything that the world was going through in 2001 whilst doing a shockingly good job at capturing some future developments that must have been incomprehensible at the time.

That game is like the novel Ulysses but adapted to be a 21st century video game and it's not always easy to understand (in fact it's so profoundly layered that it may be to it's detriment if it puts people off) but when I first played that game at 12 years old something in the back of my mind latched onto the concepts I could understand on a fundamentally primal level but did not have the knowledge to explain at the time.

I think that whether you make that similar sort of connection is pretty much the sole barometer for whether you end up liking MGS2 or not.

MGS2 is gaming's greatest audience-participation performance art, and is eerily prophethetic.

Shame about 4, PW, and 5 though.

Peace Walker is great!

Never got around to playing through MGS2 though it appears to be one of the more divisive games, and also a game that is "uncool to like but secretly super cool to like" in that its the black sheep but a Illuminati group exists that proclaim it to be Number 1, and by Illuminati I mean Nick Robinson.

One thing is for sure: You don't forget MGS games.
MGS I was OK with. Quirky, had some nice interaction (PsychoMantis was genuinely freaky). Story had some cool "Who really calls the shots" stuff in it. Gameplay/mechanics, I always just adjust to what I'm given.
MGS2? WTF! Starts out great. Then Raiden, while I wasn't as put off by the bait and switch as some were at the time, I still found the banter between "Jack and Rose" irritating; I felt like I was being tested. Later in the game when everything starts going batshit, the "Colonel" and Rose start talking about the S3 project, and they put it to you (the gamer) as if you are a robot who cannot help yourself and will do whatever it takes no matter how ridiculous to complete the task, even if it is not real.
I actually said, out loud, "Oh, Hell No!!" and turned off the console.
So for MGS3, obviously I had no interest, but my buddy couldn't stop talking about how different 3 was from 2, and there was no way I wouldn't absolutely love it. He was right.
I, like you, felt compelled to finish the batshit story in 2, and it didn't let me down, fucking batshit, and after deriding me near the end of the game, the closing movie jumps up and down about how you have to be free and make your own choices. WTF!? Make up your fricken mind!
MGS3 was the second time Kojima got me all worked up over his story, but MGS3 was more emotional. Overall it's one of the best games I have ever played.I loved just about all the characters whether they were on the codec, or kicking my ass in a boss battle, and HOLY FUCK, The End is the strangest/funniest boss battles I have encountered.

I'm getting pretty spoilery from here on out concerning 3 and 4.

You will never forget the last time MGS3 forces you to hit the attack button. I set the controller down and waited, hoping there would eventually be a cutscene. Damn you Kojima!!
MGS4 was a no brainer after 3. However, while I enjoyed the game, good GOD! Snake's voice acting (I know it's still Hayter, I think he's a legend) made me want to gouge my ears out. Of them all I was not affected much by 4. I'd say returning to Shadow Moses was goosebumpy and the Ocelot was a riot.
Have yet to play MGSV. I don't game like I used to, and the Konami bullshit turned me off in a big way.

P.T. was the most dread inducing experience I have ever had with a piece of interactive media, and those loopy fucks took it all away.

@slag: This reply is kinda late but anyway..

Regarding the third person camera in MGS3 - not sure which version you played, regular or subsistence, but the regular actually shipped with a top-down camera view which was highly impractical for that specific entry in the series causing you to constantly run into guards just beyond the screen. Subsistence added a freely controllable camera which helped a lot considering Snake Eater did away with the soliton radar (it wasn't invented yet after all!). I'm not sure what your preference is in these type of games, or if you even have the time or desire to go back to MGS4, but it's weird albeit interesting Metal Gear game. The closest you'll come to an interactive movie with fully interactive game bits in between the, no joke, nearly hour long cutscenes.

I personally like the fixed camera angles of MGS3. They show you what you need to see most of the time, you don't have to work the right stick constantly and since the levels were designed around that camera, it captures them beautifully. I think it should be the default in all versions of MGS3. The new camera should be the alternate. But it's nice to have the new camera just in case you can't see something, because often the old one is ineffective.

MGS2 is my favorite. The story of 3 is simpler but more boring, in my opinion.

Yeah, those three kind of soured the series for me and tarnished my respect for Kojima. It was great as a trilogy.

@ezekiel: Tarnished your respect for Kojima? Because.. you didn't like the games he made? Was he reported to have beat his staff with metal rods during their development or something?

I once ate a peach out of season and it turned me off of them for a whole year.

And?

Yeah. I don't see how that's strange. Artists are usually respected for their work. Bad work = loss of respect. For the record, I don't think any of the MGS games are downright bad, but MGS4 and each game after it disappointed me with crappy stories and inferior game design. I also dislike how flamboyantly narcissistic he has been with his "celebrity" status for the last decade. When everybody was upset about Konami removing his name from websites, I thought he didn't need his name on everything in the first place. His games are group efforts.

@ezekiel: You'll be glad to know that in interviews he often talked about how it's a group effort! Also I don't think you lose respect for artists the second they don't output things on your specific frequency. You can lose interest in them but to lose respect is something entirely different.

Play Tetris. Welcome back!

@humanity said:

I played the subsistence version (aka the "better one"). It's been so long I don't remember precisely what I found so offputting. I knew it was supposed to better which was partly why I found it so grating.

Whatever it was, it was completely ironed out by the time V launched. That played like a dream

but I I thought it was funny MGS2 put him off gaming for awhile, since MGS3 more or less was the last game I played until Dark Souls 5 years later (I did play Dragon Age: Origins in that run, but that was about it) and wasn't really brought all the way back into gaming until Dragon's Dogma reignited my passion. TBF I had a serious case of gaming burnout after pounding a huge number of PS2 and GC titles and a lot of stress/stuff I had to deal with in my personal life, so MGS3 definitely wasn't solely responsible. My patience/tolerance was pretty low at the time.

I did pick up 4 for about 5 bucks earlier this year since I liked MGSV so much but my PS3 disk drive died and I'm not sure I feel like it fixing it atm. From what you describe that pacing sounds a lot like 2. I can live with that in a Metal Gear game, kinda used to it.