Hey! How was your holiday?
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PS VitBritaGAF I sold my OLED for £100, woo for keeping the packaging and looking after it! LCD master race now!
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BritGAF |OT5| Superb Birds, Absurd Turds and Disturbed Nerds
- Thread starter Mikeside
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Hey! How was your holiday?
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PS VitBritaGAF I sold my OLED for £100, woo for keeping the packaging and looking after it! LCD master race now!
QuicheFontaine
Member
Oh wow, I had the best time. Only two weeks but it felt like ages. We did this in Bangkok, which I'd never heard of before but it was super-fun. From the website it looks like there's one in London too. We also did all the usual touristy stuff as well - reclining Buddha, Wat Arun, Soi Cowboy, yadda yadda. Koh Samui was ace, we had a little cabana hut thing right on the beach. Plus you can rent a moped for like £5 a day and zip all around the island. I'd never ridden one before and absolutely loved it (I only realised when I got back that my driver's licence doesn't actually cover mopeds - whoops!). Kuala Lumpur was fun because I knew a guy who lives from my uni course. It was nice to have someone show us all the non-touristy stuff, as well as drive us around. KL is really not navigable on foot, kind of like Milton Keynes. At least KL has skyways though, so you can get from one mall to another. Singapore, I've always wanted to visit, but only spent about 6 hours there so really I've only technically been there. I'll have to go back someday and visit properly. Oh, and I'm engaged now, so there's that
Psssh, what??? OLED for life mate.
Oh wow, I had the best time. Only two weeks but it felt like ages. We did this in Bangkok, which I'd never heard of before but it was super-fun. From the website it looks like there's one in London too. We also did all the usual touristy stuff as well - reclining Buddha, Wat Arun, Soi Cowboy, yadda yadda. Koh Samui was ace, we had a little cabana hut thing right on the beach. Plus you can rent a moped for like £5 a day and zip all around the island. I'd never ridden one before and absolutely loved it (I only realised when I got back that my driver's licence doesn't actually cover mopeds - whoops!). Kuala Lumpur was fun because I knew a guy who lives from my uni course. It was nice to have someone show us all the non-touristy stuff, as well as drive us around. KL is really not navigable on foot, kind of like Milton Keynes. At least KL has skyways though, so you can get from one mall to another. Singapore, I've always wanted to visit, but only spent about 6 hours there so really I've only technically been there. I'll have to go back someday and visit properly. Oh, and I'm engaged now, so there's that
Psssh, what??? OLED for life mate.
Wow! That all sounds amazing - did you get back after martial law then? My friend was over there and said that there was one bar that stayed open because it had no door! Would love to go to Singapore too. I've worked quite a bit with Singaporeans and they've all been hilarious.
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But my LCD is pretty and white and slim and nice so I win go away
QuicheFontaine
Member
They impeached the PM two days before we went and martial law came in like two days after we left BKK, so we were pretty lucky. Honestly, if I hadn't seen it on the news in the UK, I'd've never known the PM had just been impeached. The Thais really just seem to take in their stride (probably due to how frequently the govt seems to get overthrown) and life goes on regardless. Martial law is a different matter though, and I'm glad we avoided that.
Btw, anyone remember the Channel 5 show "Martial Law"? I used to watch it all the time. Sammo was awesome.
Hey, if you want to join the LCD untermensch, that's your lookout.
I kid, I kid, my brother has an LCD. I tried it and was amazed at how much better the form factor is with the 2000. Nice colours are just the cherry on top imo.
Saturday I think. That's when I'm going anyway.
dapperbandit
Banned
Saturday for me.
Friday and Saturday and E joining me for the meet on Sat.
Btw shorty I feel the same! This thread is like my little work crutch which basically stops me from being a brittle stress head. And why do you think I keep harping on about Smite, cos it's social and it's funny duh! It's not cos I'm any good at I
Btw shorty I feel the same! This thread is like my little work crutch which basically stops me from being a brittle stress head. And why do you think I keep harping on about Smite, cos it's social and it's funny duh! It's not cos I'm any good at I
Screaming Meat
Unconfirmed Member
I just finished reading Grant Morrison's 'Joe the Barbarian' and the ending put tears in my eyes. I'm such a fucking pussy.
NinjaBoiX
Member
By my account it costs precisely £1 per minute to play through Ground Zeroes. Pretty pricey given how dull that 30 minutes is. And yeah, MGS4 is probably one of the worst game I've played in the last five years. Simply woeful.
I'll never understand the love for that franchise; long, boring cutscenes punctuated by brief moments of stiff, awkward gameplay. You realise just how bad the balance is when you skip the cutscness, there are a few points in MGS4 where it's literally:
*cutscene - walk like 6 steps in a straight line - cutscene*
It feels like he's genuinely taking the piss. Just direct movies Kojima, your games are shit.
/weekly MGS whinge
Well I mean we've been through this before and you need to play MGS3 but you're spot on about MGS4.
A sort of pained analogy (gafnoanalogy etc) but MGS4 is like the hunting episode in season one of South Park where Stan refused to shoot anything until the end where he shoots scuzzlebutt after it saves them. Konami refuse to tell Kojima no at nearly all of the shit he wrote (which was like 90% of MGS4) but at the ONE GOOD THING in MGS4 Konami was all nononono you can't do that please insert something really fucking dumb.
Edit: okay there were 2 good things about MGS4 but Konami killed that as well
NinjaBoiX
Member
no uCHEEZMO;114707287 said:
We never hung out this weekend brah, I was mad busy. There'll be plenty of time for that in a few weeks though!
Even during the "gameplay" sections it felt like he was more interested in telling a story.
What was the deal with that chapter (3 I think?) where you were just following that dude? Come on mane...
The Rex v Ray fight was pretty cool though. And I liked the ZoE games.
I guess he isn't a complete hack.
no u
We never hung out this weekend brah, I was mad busy. There'll be plenty of time for that in a few weeks though!
Even during the "gameplay" sections it felt like he was more interested in telling a story.
What was the deal with that chapter (3 I think?) where you were just following that dude? Come on mane...
The Rex v Ray fight was pretty cool though. And I liked the ZoE games.
I guess he isn't a complete hack.
Act 1 and 2 were pretty good but yeah act 3 is just awful.
Rubbish King
The gift that keeps on giving
game of fuckin' thrones man
game. of. fuckin. thrones.
game. of. fuckin. thrones.
Screaming Meat
Unconfirmed Member
NinjaBoiX
Member
IKR? I actually jumped off the couch and walked around with my head in my hands saying "Jesus Christ!" for a minute or so.
Incredible episode.
Screaming Meat
Unconfirmed Member
I'm sorry, mane. I... I'm pretty emotional right now.
The more I think about ground zeroes the more I think I dislike it. In fact I'm just going to rewrite it right now:
Big boss is chilling with Kaz at mother base talking about how big boss should make himself explosion proof and flame retardant just in case someone comes at him with rc missiles or a aerosol can and a lighter. Suddenly XOF show up in a Hind a start firing at mother base. Big boss has just enough time to do a sweet jump accompanied by jet sounds onto a missile and does a sweet ass flip off it (also accompanied by jet sounds) redirecting it... Into some sort of fuel depot blowing up mother base and making hours of my life spent playing peace walker all for naught.
Jackben
bitch I'm taking calls.
Pop over to gaming side and you'll see.
Jedeye Sniv
Banned
I played GZ for ten hours, go fuck yaself kid.
I love the MGS cutscenes if only for the fact that literally no other medium is able to be so bizarre, stupid and self indulgent as video games. MGS has a very strange charm which can only truly be appreciated if you just let go and let the madness swallow you whole.
But the Ennio Morricone song!
But the mission where you rescue Kojima!
But THEY PLAYED US LIKE A DAMN FIDDLE!
Jackben
bitch I'm taking calls.
Yes to all of this.
played us like a damn fiddle will stay in somehow. its a line that works with how i think big boss and kaz's relationship is based on, which largely hinges on the part in peace walker where kaz has to tell big boss how swell it would be to have like, a fridge on motherbase since you've kidnapped hundreds of dudes.
QuicheFontaine
Member
Right. I'm watching this tonight.
Amazed I've not been spoilered yet, my luck can't last much longer.
Screaming Meat
Unconfirmed Member
I think MGS2 is probably the closest a video game has come to being Art. It has a lot to say about a broad range of subjects, from something as inane as gaming hype and gamers in general, to the nature of reality in the Information Age, yet it managed in all that to improve the series' trademark playability a thousand fold. In many ways though, it tries to be unsatisfactory to make it's point, purposely retreading and subverting ground trodden in MGS, yanking control of Snake away from the player, bitterly taking potshots at gamer mentality, and having many of the really exciting events happening off screen (among other things).
After Hideo's Magnum Opus, MGS3 came as a bit of palette cleanser. It was a much more focused love letter to the films and influences that Hideo grew up with (and which my Father introduced me too) whilst still having a broader (albeit subtler) point. It was less of a Polemic Take That! at the player, the environment was far better designed and much more meaty than The Big Shell (blowing up food storage made the soldiers in the area hungry!), and the systems it introduced were fantastic and pretty progressive (I don't remember camouflage being in Stealth games prior to it). In many ways, it was giving the player what they wanted (which is a bit of shame in some respects) whilst also scratching a personal itch of Kojima's (oo-er).
All in all, I think they are very different experiences. Both are accomplished works in different ways and both hold a very special place in my heart (sorry Ninj).
Some guy dies. Or maybe it's a woman. Or a dragon.
i could probably consider MGS2 as an artgame. since thats usually just a word to avoid calling something bad. while MGS2 brings a lot of good upgrades, which were mind blowing after MGS1 its an ultimately unsatisfying experience being filled with codec calls, not even cutscenes, just characters that like to hear their own voice while they blabber on about nothing at best and nonsense at worst. the game feels like it's missing a lot, one of the shells in big shell you dont even get to do anything in except a shitty swimming and sniping section.
It also introduces Raiden, who by himself is just a whiney unlikable fuck, but no, he also has to come with the extra baggage of his dumb shit girl friend.
really what i think this all boils down to is fuck rose.
2 and 4 are as bad as each other and both have rose in, coincidence? I think not!
It also introduces Raiden, who by himself is just a whiney unlikable fuck, but no, he also has to come with the extra baggage of his dumb shit girl friend.
really what i think this all boils down to is fuck rose.
2 and 4 are as bad as each other and both have rose in, coincidence? I think not!
Screaming Meat
Unconfirmed Member
I think it's Art because it uses the medium in a way few others ever have to express a message, and it took huge risks in doing so. I'd even go so far as to argue that although the gameplay was a massive improvement over MGS in many respects, it was most of the time secondary to the game's point. I have nothing but huge respect for that. I mean, Hideo purposely rehashes a number of milestone's from MGS and subverts them in service of the game's themes something you probably won't even realise until a second or third playthrough. It's a magnificent bit of game design (although it arguably relies a little too much on knowledge of MGS). Christ, he even used the RL marketing to make a point about disinformation! That's fucking ballsy when you're dealing with the most anticipated game in the world (at least, at that time).
It's an incredible package that, like all good Art, leaves you shell- shocked and makes you think beyond the actual experience. There are few (if any) games like it and I doubt we'll see anything of it's like again. Even if you personally didn't like it (and it can understand that), you have to respect the balls and the mastery of the medium on display.
Also: Raiden is you, the player. Therefore, you hate yourself (haw haw)!
I agree with everything you've said about MGS2. For me that game really became exceptional in the final third and you became aware of how it had been playing with you all along. I also absolutely love the bonkers ambition of it. I like almost any media with bonkers ambition. I just love grand follies that try and be about everything, ever - I even liked Southland Tales - and it's so rare to find a game that even thinks about tackling the kind of things MGS2 does. That's probably why I love games like Fez and Flower and so on - how many games take on ideas about history, evolution, perspective, even transcendence or nature, growth, harmony, synaesthesia and so on...
And those are all of the reasons I didn't get on with MGS3. For me, the MGS games have never had the best gameplay (apart from Ground Zeroes, which really surprised me). They've always been a bit clunky and unintuitive and without any of the ambition or scale of MGS2 I just couldn't become invested in 3. It felt like a retraction - and I know it was deliberate and it's meant to be a 60s pastiche, but I just didn't find it interesting, as much as I appreciate the things Kojima tried with The End and The Sorrow.
I can't criticise the first one because to 16 year old sploat it was amazing and on a CD and had human voices and oh my god its just like a film wow.
QuicheFontaine
Member
Some Guy was my favourite character ;_;
Screaming Meat
Unconfirmed Member
I can totally understand that.
I've personally always thought MGS gave you maximum control (poke your head over the grass/ledge! Lean from cover! Tip toe! Stalk!) at the expense of your fingers. Although I love GZ's streamlined controls (even MGS4s) and it was an inevitability, I kind of miss the finger origami, but probably more out nostalgia ridiculously.
How do you follow up something like MGS2? You can't pull a trick like that twice. I don't think he could've matched MGS2 in terms of scope, and I think he dialled it down to make something a little more personal, whilst still retaining those big philosophical points (all be it on a narrower, less meta, scale). It was Hideo having fun, I think, although I'm not suggesting he didn't with MGS2.
Plus, it introduced one of gaming's best characters: philosophy spouting, super-agent The Boss!
I don't though, this would almost put me in Ninj's camp but I do like Kojima as a game designer. The guy has a crazy amount of attention to detail, and love of adding just really obscure easter eggs to his games and its fantastic and I love that and I love hearing about all the scrapped ideas he had like decoy octopus (which did show up eventually) or how he originally wanted The End fight to be like. I think they guy has a lot of good ideas but either lacks the ability to write it down coherently or the translation team was lacking.
MGS2 felt like dumb conspiracy shit from a weird truther.
Screaming Meat
Unconfirmed Member
That's fair enough. I'd have loved to have seen Oldboy.
The conspiracy stuff is window dressing, a narrative metaphor for disinformation. He was really trying to make a point about reality in the Information Age using a video game and video game marketing/hype. Such balls!
This was his big influence at the time. Hence why there is a character called Peter Stillman, it's set in New York, and it dissects the nature of games, stories and reality. Or summink.
Fucking amazing to me personally. Stuff like that gets me so excited that my erection starts gnashing it's teeth.
Hurrah! I adore the NY Trilogy! I read it while stoned in the afternoon just after being sacked from a job when I was 19. City of Glass absolutely exploded my mind. I then went on a huge Paul Auster binge but nothing of his has had that effect on me. There was a quote on the back of the edition I had which summed up his writing perfectly - I can't remember it exactly but it was something to do with pellucidity.
NinjaBoiX
Member
MGS2 started so strong, that tanker was an incredible environment. I had it in my head that I was going to end up in some swanky office building in New York afterwards, so to end up on the big cluster of cookie cutter orange hexagons was such a huge disappointment.
I understand that the design of these areas was really intricate and all that, but man it was so dull visually. "Oh look, it's another metal walkway with an orange railing."
The attention to detail was exemplary, melting ice cubes, slipping on bird shit, shooting melons! But I just found the setting so dull after that amazing tanker.
MGS1 was the nuts though, love that game. Can't comment on MGS3, even though I've seen most of it through my mate playing it.
MGS1 >>>>>>>>>>>> MGS5 > MGS2 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> dipping my penis in hydrochloric acid whilst sucking off dogs for Quavers >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> MGS4
I understand that the design of these areas was really intricate and all that, but man it was so dull visually. "Oh look, it's another metal walkway with an orange railing."
The attention to detail was exemplary, melting ice cubes, slipping on bird shit, shooting melons! But I just found the setting so dull after that amazing tanker.
MGS1 was the nuts though, love that game. Can't comment on MGS3, even though I've seen most of it through my mate playing it.
MGS1 >>>>>>>>>>>> MGS5 > MGS2 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> dipping my penis in hydrochloric acid whilst sucking off dogs for Quavers >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> MGS4
Screaming Meat
Unconfirmed Member
Hurrah! I've not read anything else by him, I'm afraid. I bought it randomly in an airport and read it in Turkey. I love Raymond Chandler so I was expecting some cool detective fiction. Instead I got my metaphorical head blown off.
It was so hot in Turkey that the binding glue melted as I read it and the thing completely decayed as I went through, which seemed weirdly apt.
Yeah, I know what you mean about the level design. I think that aesthetic choice was on purpose though. If you subscribe to the "MGS2 is all a VR simulation" (and there is ample evidence for that), I think The Big Shell is meant to look like a circuit or a micro processor or summink. I dunno, I'd have to look it up. But, yeah, it was pretty samey.
Do yourself a favour and play MGS3. It's much closer to MGS, I promise!
I've never had a problem with MGS's controls other than the use of the jank analog face buttons. Fantastic games as well that allow you to take areas on in different ways. The big outdoor maps of 3 were fantastic, couple with lots of dumb fun ways to deal with guards. Ground Zeroes felt like a step back as it was basically "here's a gun, we splinter-cell now"
I dont think I could even rank MGS in any order other than 3 > all but:
The Good:
MGS3
MGS1
MGS Ghost Babel
MGO2 (and maybe 1 but who even had a PS2 network adapter)
Peace Walker
The Bad:
MGS4
MGS2
Portable Ops
The hopefully Phantom Pain isn't anything like:
Ground Zeroes
The one where Solid Snake is only the ultimate soldier because Big Boss hires morons who think its night time because some dude hatched an owl:
Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake
I dont think I could even rank MGS in any order other than 3 > all but:
The Good:
MGS3
MGS1
MGS Ghost Babel
MGO2 (and maybe 1 but who even had a PS2 network adapter)
Peace Walker
The Bad:
MGS4
MGS2
Portable Ops
The hopefully Phantom Pain isn't anything like:
Ground Zeroes
The one where Solid Snake is only the ultimate soldier because Big Boss hires morons who think its night time because some dude hatched an owl:
Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake
Screaming Meat
Unconfirmed Member
I did. It was great!
Also: I had a no kill clan in MGO2. I ended up with like 8,000 stuns and no kills. At all. I had some truly evil tactics down. I like to think I made players around the world scream in frustration.
haha that sounds amazing, that is why MGO2 was so good. Only way for Konami to redeem themselves is for MGS5 to have a MGO3... or 4? I dunno if the Peace Walker one even counts. Maybe I should try it out, hopefully it has some weird germans that seem to still play obscure MP games like Riddick did.
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