Posts tagged metal gear solid

So I got the Metal Gear HD collection mainly because I wanted Metal Gear Solid 3 because it’s one of the greatest games ever. Turns out it wouldn’t be the first thing I’d play. Instead fellow member of the stars team Sam suggested we play through peace walker together. Something we had planned on doing since we had it on the psp, unfortunately my psp never liked to connect to the internet making it rather awkward to play together. Now peace walker is actually a brilliant game, when I attempted to play it on the psp I really wasn’t that into it. Maybe it was the controls, or maybe because I was now playing it on a bigger screen it was better I have no idea but either way I’m glad to have completed peace walker. The narrative throughout the game was really intriguing and well scripted. The metal gear series has always had a compelling story to it and it’s really enjoyable getting to play through this part of the metal gear narrative. You play as Big Boss in events set shortly after Metal Gear Solid 3. I’m a huge fan of Big Boss as a character and as mentioned I loved 3 so this game is well worth the play through. If your a fan of the metal gear series of any of the games, this is definitely worthwhile playing and will help enhance your knowledge of the Metal Gear series as a whole. It certainly helped clear a few things up for me. So if your not entirely familiar with the ins and outs of the metal gear story, Peace Walker will certainly keep you on the edge of your seat.

The controls of Peace Walker are so easy to get to grips with and it certainly feels very natural. It’s so easy to just pick up this game and get into, there isn’t really an adjustment period with the controls, vital if your going to drop in and out of playing this game. There are side missions with peace walker and they are well worth doing especially the fulton recovery missions which will gain you more staff members to build up your mother base. Mother Base is another important aspect to this game. Seriously don’t ignore it. The upgrades you can get from working on enhancing and improving your mother base are incredibly useful. So I would suggest if you are playing this game set aside 5 minutes after each mission or every other mission to improve your mother base it’s a great aspect to the game. I like all the side missions and all those aspects within this game. I love games that have re-playability or give you a reason to keep going back and continually playing them. Peace Walker certainly has that, including in your mother base are an army of troops which you can dispatch and send on missions. It’s a really fun aspect to this game, not necessary but it’s something cool and feels like a bonus. The soundtrack in this game is awesome, the Metal Gear series never gets it wrong and that’s what makes them such good games in there consistency. You know that whenever you pick up a game in the metal gear series it will be a brilliant and riveting game. Soundtrack is really important within a game, you may not always notice it but a good soundtrack will certainly make the gaming experience all the more better. I advise people to just listen to the soundtrack of metal gear, it’s amazing. Peace Walker is a very different style to the other Metal Gear games but don’t let that put you off. It’s a really nice change to the formula and is just as effective and compelling as the other games. Visually it’s a stunning game. Some of the cutscenes would make for brilliant artwork.

It’s a really beautiful game and I would advise anyone to play it, even if you’ve never played a game in the metal gear series I recommend you try this out. Now you could buy it for your psp, if you still have one and haven’t traded it in for a vita or you could buy the HD collection which I would recommend more because then you get a bunch of other metal gear games that are seriously worth playing. Even if you have those games already get the HD collection because it’s a worthwhile investment.  

The metal gear marathon is tomorrow! Here’s everything you need to know about it. 

We’ll be starting at 7:00pm UK time. Thats 11:00am US pacific time or 2:00pm US eastern time. 

You’ll be able to watch our stream either here on the site or over on our ustream channel here

You’ll need a ustream account to chat with us and it’s free of course. The chat will also be on the site and the ustream channel. 

we’ll be playing the games in order so we’ll start with Metal gear and finish with MGS4.

This is all for the charity child’s play. They do some really great work so please donate towards our cause if you can. All the money goes straight to child’s play so theres no way for us to even touch your money. It also goes through paypal so its all safe. Just click the donate widget on starsmarathon.com. 

For more information check out our previous post here

Wait! Give me a chance to explain myself. I know a lot of people don’t but I love metal gear solid 2 and hopefully after you’ve read this you’ll think it’s not too bad either

So why does everyone seem to hate MGS2 so much? Well most complaints stem back to a single person and of course its Raiden. A lot of people think Raiden can’t compete with snake but I think people don’t realise he was never meant to be a better version of snake. All the way through the game there are similarities between Raidens missons and snake previous missions. Raiden was a rookie with no real combat training but he was sent into the enemy base alone, which mirrors the story of the original metal gear on the MSX. Not just this Raiden was originally taught by Solidus, who was the perfect clone of big boss and snake was taught by big boss himself. They’re are loads of other similarities but I think it’s the differences that define Raiden and thats what makes him an interesting character. Snake was a womaniser and Raiden was in love with Rose. Now a lot of people complain about how Raiden wouldn’t shut up about Rose but think about it for a second. Snake was sterile therefore he never let himself get close to women, he even abandoned Myril who he appeared to have feelings for at the end of MGS. Raiden is a much more human character, he’s not been turned into a bitter soldier like snake and snake knows this which is why he want Raiden to return to his normal life. The whole of MGS2 is a progression of Raidens character and at the end we finally think Raiden can put his past behind him and live happily with Rose (of course in MGS4 we see that this doesn’t happen). Anyway there’s tones of reasons why I love the MGS2 story but I don’t want to get to bogged down and end up not talking about the gameplay. 

MGS2 has probably my favourite gameplay in the entire series. It’s all confined areas and its very clinical. Most people would think this was a negative, but for MGS2 it works. Metal gear is a stealth series and stealth works so much better in confined spaces. I think metal gear lost a lot of what made it great after metal gear solid 2. Metal gear solid 3, in my opinion, was no where near as fun as MGS2. It lost a lot of the humour, of course there was still humour but nothing compared to the arsenal gear section of MGS2 (where the AI goes crazy is probably one of the funniest moments in gaming).

While I would love to waffle on forever about why I love MGS2, I should probably stop before this gets too long. So thats why I love MGS2. I’d love to hear about the games you love so drop me a comment