ah man I usually like your posts but you're really bumming me out right now.
I don't know man, I feel like the story was pretty interesting and compelling but thematically it was definitely more exoteric than the rest of the series: "Politicians exploiting both their homeland and other countries for personal gain is a thing that happens, Social Media is more conducive to war and hate than peace and love, if you're going to fight, fight for what you believe in" are by far more accessible to a general audience than "Human culture has had as much of a hand in the trajectory of our species as Genetics if not more so, but the impending (in 2001) shift in the way we spread and consume culture caused by digital information technology has the potential to skew and distort the advancement---or even continuity--- of society."
Just because it's not up there with "the 21st Century's 1984", though, doesn't mean it isn't a good narrative with good themes. Draw any $60 game or Blockbuster Movie released in the last year out of a hat, and I think you'll find Metal Gear Rising has far more intellectual substance.
Regarding the gameplay, man, you know you can stealth through a large part of Metal Gear Rising, right? I'm actually planning on formally counting how many A) Mandatory Stealth Sections, B) Optional Stealth Sections and C) Mandatory Combat sections there are in every mainline MGS game and compare it with MGR, but I already have a feeling that the Stealth-to-Optional-to-Combat ratio won't be more than a marginal difference.
I've been a part of the online MGS community in a hardcore way since roughly 2006, finished every game in the series including MG1 and MG2 before Rising came out and honestly I loved the game to bits. It's my Fourth favorite game of all time---with MGS2, MGS1 and MGS3 being the first three. To this day I still don't get why everyone hates it so much.
There you go then lol
