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Comments
Well, hardback No-bot is only 16 bucks... and he seems to have no bottom, that's surely an interesting read.
Yes, nice books and popular ones are expensive here too, probably because most books aren't very successful at all. Still, most books would probably be considered a moderate success if they grossed $200000 the same isn't true for pretty much any medium.
Around 1/2 to 1/3rd the price.
Of course, many people own many more books than they do video games. I dunno if I even own 100 video games, while I own well over 1,000 books.
@Unknown_Entity is doing a livestream of Eryi's Action soon. Maybe within the next few days.
For those who don't know, Eryi's Action is...like, Syobon Action (a.k.a. Cat Mario) but a whole game's worth of it.
They put a TV spot for the new Fire Emblem! Which is good because the reason why FE fell out of the spotlight after PoR was due to lack of advertising.
The demo is also out, and I can say for certain that it's best looking game on the 3DS, if not the best game period.
Damn you America and getting FE 2 months earlier than us.
At least we're getting it.
Wow. Around here it can be 1/6th to 1/3rd. Granted as a point for video games, you tend to get more time and content out of a single vidya than a single book.
I'm gonna get into the Metal Gear Solid series.
I have yet to ever play a single one.
So having completed all of Ys Origin and not discovered the answer, who was the sixth Great Demon of Ys? The Demonic Core has a medallion door like all the others, but the boss behind it is a grudge match with Toal or Kishgal instead of a big nasty.
Play Metal Gear first. :P
Technically the NES games are part of the timeline indeed.
Although insofar as the Solid games go, I think 3, 2, 1, 4 is an interesting order. It's not strictly in timeline order, but it allows you to more sharply experience 1 and 4 as a more "singular" kind of story, from the perspective of Solid Snake. 3 is a pretty excellent prequel and 2 begins the "modern" timeline in the second act, allowing 1 to throw you back for context and 4 to tie it up.
I kind of played the games in that order by accident once and it was pretty awesome.
They are, but he did specify "Solid". :P
Personally, I think MGS gives you the cliff notes about what happens on Zanzibar and Outer Haven extremely well so I'd say it works.
Also, that's a nice order, I'd have to try it. And play one and two. >_< (I played 3 and 4 and "watched" 1 and 2 to compensate)
Playing 2 before 1 would completely destroy the entire point of 2.
I have already played both of the old MG games, and I know where they are in the story. After 3, right?
So, I am having trouble thinking of what order I want to do.
The obvious is 1, 2, 3, 4.
But I could of course do 3, 1, 2, 4.
Honestly, I think 3,1,2,4 is an order that makes sense for repeat plays, but I'd say 1,2,3,4 is probably best the first time through.
Especially since the mechanics (controls in particular) get gradually better game-to-game (with the caveat that I haven't played 4), so jumping from 3 to 1 would be awful in that respect.
You can easily read the document that comes with the game where that Ukranian nuke expert from MGS1 explains Shadow Moses. Nowhere near as satisfying as playing MGS1 but considering that it hasn't aged very well and that the remake converts it into a John Woo movie and replaces some of the VAs with more sub-par ones...
I'd say you should also include Peace Walker into the mix.
But much of the point of 2 relates to much more form-based similarities that the novel would not convey.
If you aren't going to play 1, you might as well just read a summary of 2 as well.
On a more "meta" level, MGS2 is a commentary on video games as a whole and as someone who played 2 before 1, I have to say that it worked. Coming into that game with no expectations allowed me to appreciate it in ways someone playing it as a sequel might not quite get at first. On a more literal level, it's certainly a deliberate "repeat" of the first game in many ways beyond basic gameplay, but I think the game's essence comes across without experiencing the first game just fine.
Playing MGS2 first also brings the benefit of experiencing Snake from a "distance" and more as a secondary character (apart from the introductory mission, of course), which helps bring the character's mystique out. It also helps that MGS2 has the best writing insofar as Snake is concerned, because he gets to be his own character without compromise, since he doesn't have to be a player avatar. MGS1 and MGS4 suffer a little by diminishing Snake's character so he can fit into the agency that comes with the concept of gameplay in general, but MGS2's Snake, largely not being controlled by the player, allows us to experience Snake purely as a narrative entity.
A lot of players complained about playing the "wimpy" Raiden for most of MGS2, but I felt that was counteracted by
MGS has never really been that excellent at mixing core gameplay mechanics and narrative. Mind, the series has done some very clever things with post-modernist storytelling and the use of gameplay within that, but that's largely to do with specific instances of gameplay and particular mechanics rather than underscoring the experience as a whole. With that in mind, the games where you actually play as Solid Snake give you less of an idea of who he actually is than MGS2. He can speak and act in a characterful way without being contradicted by player agency asshattery.
Also, Snake gives you a sword in MGS2 and that's pretty neat.
I enjoyed Peace Walker a lot and I tentatively agree. It's definitely less important than MGS1 through to MGS4, but it's well deserving of a playthrough and provides some good cliffnotes on the political themes of the series as a whole. It also has a remarkably strong ending for a video game, although that just might be my penchant for mixing (potential) spirituality and digital technology.
Peace Walker, let it be known, is also a game that starts out very mediocre and genuinely gets better as it goes along. Unfortunately (at least for us), I think it very much had a Japanese audience in mind. You can complete the game easily enough, but to get all the content and so on, you have to do a significant amount of mission grinding for stuff. A player can easily make it through the main story with only 50% of the stuff in the actual game. As much as the grind element is optional, it's still mildly frustrating that it was so poorly paced in relation to the main story.
Most of the similarities between 1 and 2 come from the structuring of the plot, though. After all, it's all a narrative created by the Patriots in order to train more Solid Snakes who are willing to go out and fight for them.
I don't think that's something that you would miss by not playing 1 and only reading about it. It's what I did back when I started it. I didn't finish it but the cutscenes are pretty obvious about it and let's face it, the connection is mostly there as a nuance rather than at the very core of the narrative cohesion
Yeah, but without it...well, the game wouldn't have all that much going for it beyond advancing the series plot.
The first MGS seems very much like Kojima finding his feet in a new games development context. The series in general is kind of like poorly communicated genius, like reading poetry in a language one doesn't understand, but MGS1 is especially poorly written in comparison to the other games. Beyond that, there's a lot of mechanical flummoxes and the game tries to handle stuff that the technology and/or gameplay design just couldn't handle adequately.
My last post last page was a longpost about why MGS2 is strong in its own right, even without playing MGS1. The core of my points on this matter are there (and copypasta'ing requires efforts blegh blegh blegh).
I really really can't disagree enough because this implies that there's no point whatsoever to Raiden or his own journey without Snake when that's just the frame for his own liberation from his past.
Very true, but...see above.
Watching Raiden break free is better when you fully understand what he's breaking free from.
I'd say the S3 is hardly the most part of what he's breaking away so much as his past as Solidus' adopted son and Patriot toy.