BOLDSTATE

Belch’s base was filled with some cool presents for Jeff, the best of which is the HP-Sucker which’ll allow Jeff to make a damage dealing contribution each turn.

I made a save state before Belch so I could try out the challenge of defeating him without using Fly Honey, but it was too hard for my somewhat under-leveled team. I’ll come back to it another day so I can make a video or something.

After I left the base, I saved and then tried out this neat little glitch.

I haven’t beat Trillionage Sprout yet, but I’ll try to get to it later today.

I fell on hard times towards the end of this GP. Itoi was poisoned by a Zombie Dog beneath the graveyard, but he still hadn’t learned Healing B yet so I was stuck with the pain. I was also a bit too conservative with Iwata’s Bombs against the mini-boss and relied almost entirely upon Reggi winning the fight with Thunder. Her last blast did the trick, but Iwata did manage to help out a bit with his Slime Generator. Who would’ve thought a Slimy Pile could be solidified by the Slime Generator? You’d think it would heal it or something.

[NOTE: My opinion of this game has changed.]

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater isn’t a very good game.

Yes, I’m shifting gears from MGS4 to MGS3 since my brother won’t part with his PS3 anytime soon. Instead, I borrowed my old PS2 and his copy of MGS3: Subsistence. First impressions? The game’s controls are horrible.

I played through the first two games a while back and enjoyed them both, so I’m not quite sure why my experience with the third title has me so surprised. I’m also surprised by the overwhelming amount of positive reviews MGS3 has received. Both fan and professional reviews rave about this game. Some do make mention of the awful controls, but never really address it in their score.

You can’t shoot an enemy in MGS3 with anything resembling accuracy. With a gun equipped, you can tap square to fire straight ahead, ie miss your target completely. Typically though, you’ll like to at least aim in the right direction so you’ll hold L1 to go into a first person view. In this view, you’d expect to control Snake like you do in an FPS, but you’d be wrong. Instead, you have to hold sqaure to aim your weapon and then release the button to fire.

This is fucking retarded.

The close-quarters-combat is useless. You can sneak all you want, but when it comes time to take the kill, the game stumbles and you get caught. Snake maneuvers like he has all the time in the world, even in a gunfight. Combine that with the awful gun controls and you’ll spend most of your time getting riddled with bullets. That brings me to another point: For a game that strives so hard to immerse you in realism, it’s incredibly inconsistent.

MGS3 has you camoflauging yourself to avoid detection, hunting wild animals to appease your hunger, and dressing your wounds to maintain your health. It can be fun at first to maximize your camoflauge, but doing so quickly becomes cumbersome. Dressing your wounds is quite elaborate. When you receive damage, you may also sustain injuries. The game doesn’t actually tell you though, you have to go into the menu and check each time. When you are injured, you have to use various items to soothe burns, stop bleeding, prevent infection, and secure the wound.

You can do both actions at any time, even in the middle of a fight so it’s quite strange that you can freeze time to heal bullet wounds that you seem so incredibly resistant to, yet you have to take every real-life precaution when it comes to healing those wounds.

It’s just ridiculous and leaves me with this clashing feeling. The story doesn’t help much either.

Why can’t people just kill each other? You don’t have to talk so much. You don’t have to discuss philosophy and ethics in the middle of mission. I hate to keep on mentioning this, but the prequel problem of Crisis Core presents itself here in MGS3. There are moments where Snake should have killed someone but didn’t; people who go onto to cause entire conflicts in later games. People like to relate the series’ cinemas to movies, but if that were the case, MGS3 would be one of those horrible Michael Bay movies that tries to get by on its presentation alone. The cinemas are so dragged out and full of useless musings that I really don’t see where the comparison begins other than their great visuals.

Switching gears, the game’s outdoor setting doesn’t change the game as radically as some seem to believe. Each area typically functions like an area in the complexes of the past games. I love the alligators (I forget their actual name) and bush and swamp areas, but the measures the game takes to guide you along restrict you to being surrounded by four-foot high ledges that Snake is incapable of climbing.

I want to like the latter MGS games, I really do, but what the hell? What does everyone else see that I don’t?

Now that Iwata’s joined forced with Itoi and Reggi, things should start getting fun. I can’t wait until I get the Heavy Bazooka! >:D

I’d like to briefly address an issue that’s been bothering me lately.

Yes, you can skip the cutscenes in MGS4. No, that does not forgive the ridiculous length of the cutscenes in MGS4.

Seriously, this should never come up in every popular gaming blogs’ posts that have the slightest bit to do with MGS4…but it does, every. single. time.

You don’t play a Metal Gear Solid game for the gameplay, at least not at first, and Guns of the Patriots is no exception. If you were to do that and skip every cutscene, you’d (still) have no idea what was going on and you’d find that the game is lot shorter than expected.

Basically, my point is that you play for the plot, but if the plot forces players to sit and wish they could be participating, there’s something wrong with that plot, or at least with the way it’s being handled. This brings me to a point I’ve been trying to explain to various people lately.

A game should not be a movie in disguise; it should be a game. Games were meant to be played. If you want to convert your entry in the medium into a movie-like experience, you should still place your focus on the gameplay. Otherwise, you’ve made some type of interactive movie that occassionally asks for your input. More importantly, though, a game’s plot should make sense with the gameplay.

Snake does not have time to have codec conversations about the colonel’s new wife in the middle of an active battle field with enemy helicopters patrolling overhead. I also like to think Snake’s a bit better than the silly plot tries to portray him as. Don’t make the M4 available to me if it’ll magically disappear in an early cutscene that could have otherwise ended the entire game before the second act even started.

It’s like the classic movie cliche’ of the bad guy leaving the good guy alive even though he’s been trying to kill him during the entire movie. Problem is, this cliche’ is ten times worse in video games since movies can have relatively few physical conflicts opposed to most video games where you’ll slaughter hundreds before the credits roll.

You have to build your plot and gameplay together so that both are thrilling and don’t sap the integrity of the other. MGS4 failed in this regard, but that won’t stop people from singing its praises across the internet.

Oh, and one more thing (which Adam Sessler commented on a while back after he was attacked for his Crisis Core review), just because a game is receiving relatively good scores from many reviewers, doesn’t invalidate the opinion that a game isn’t good. It’s pretty hypocritical actually considering the massive shitstorms reviewers get hit with nearly every month. So now you respect their opinions? How convenient.

Bonus!

I had a job interview today (depressing, I know!) So, I went to Best Buy, waited to be interviewed for about half and hour, spent ten minutes answering simple, yet nerve-racking questions, then bought Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift.

The game is very addictive. I only just stopped playing so I could eat and check my sites for a while. I plan on playing it for a while later today as well.

The biggest difference this time around is the bazaar. Instead of waiting for shops to stock better equipment (which teach you better abilities [which grant you better classes]), you stock the shops yourself. You do this by having merchants at the bazaar transform your loot into rare pieces of equipment. Loot is basically raw materials of various types and grades that you earn from defeating enemies and completing missions.

Finally, my party isn’t restricted by the story (more on that in a bit) when it comes to customization. In the previous FFT games, you could level all you want, but you’d reach a point where the weapons the more advanced classes needed weren’t available until you progressed in the story. You had to follow the game’s pace, not your own. But with A2, I’ve only done a few story missions as there are loads of side quests available, not to mention all of the bazaar items I’m working on.

The bazaar system is also welcome because of how lame the story. Just like the original Tactics Advance, A2′s story is about a boy who gets transported from the real world to the fantastic land of Ivalice where people form clans to reap the benefits of immortality at the hands of the mysterious judges. The main character, Luso, wants to get back home, but he’s enjoying himself a bit too much in Ivalice. It;s very reminescent of Tactics Advance’s story. Of course, this is just a first impression and I haven’t seen much, but the story doesn’t seem to be all that great so far.

Speaking of the judges, they’re back to restrict your actions in battle, but this time, they’re handled a bit better. Before battle, you choose a clan bonus that will increase specific stats for the duration of the battle, or until you break the law. Breaking the law also prevents the guilty party from being revived after they’re KO’d. It’s a lot better than going to jail like the last game, but it still clashes in a creative sense. There’s just no reason why we need to silly restrictions, especially in a quest where the enemies are plain, old monsters.

Plot aside, this game looks to be quite deep. I can’t wait to try out the new classes and races.

Today’s GP was pretty fun. It started off with a battle (Mondo Mole) and ended with a show (Runaway 5.) As I anticipated yesterday, I needed assistance from both my Bomb and PSI Caramel to make it through the battle with Mondo.

Of course, I started off with PSI Paralysis. That didn’t guarantee an easy victory, though.

Since I couldn’t Bash Mondo, I had to hope my PP wouldn’t run out. To make matters worse, Mondo can use LifeUp, and he did just that several times. I managed to take him just as Itoi and Reggi were running on empty.

After that, I made my way back to Twoson, but made sure to kill of Itoi ahead of time so I could snap a pic on this lesser-known glitch.

Pretty neat. I found out about it from an old article written by Mars.

Looks like we’ll be in Winters soon. That’s my favorite part of the entire game, but unfortunately, I won’t be able to get any use out of the T-Rex’s Bat, one of my favorite challenges. Oh, well. Once Jeff/Iwata joins my party, I’ll have the most interesting member of the team (as far as this challenge goes) for the rest of the game.