The Video Game Revue

Metal Gear Solid 4, Gran Turismo 5 Prologue

Exploring all of the differences between the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 would make for a larger rant than I have energy for today, but in the past week I have been getting a lot of experience with those differences. Owning a PS3 has more-or-less confirmed my suspicion that the 360 is a better "gamer's" console, but the PS3 did have a few surprises up its sleeve that I didn't expect. Perhaps the biggest shock was the fact that it would obligingly play DivX movies--no hacking required.

Why do I say that the Xbox 360 is a better gamer's gaming console? It has a larger line-up of games (for now, at least), the games are cheaper, and quite often the 360 version of those games have better features (particularly Xbox Live features). The market for used 360 games is thriving, and that's pretty much the only reason I bother to go to EB Games anymore. Since buying my PS3, I've bought twice as many 360 games as PS3 games.

The general trend among people I know is that gamers who have already bought a next-gen console tend to have a 360, and gamers who are still waiting to buy a next-gen console are waiting on the PS3. I know the feeling: my original plan was to wait on the PS3, but I cracked and bought a 360 first. The longer I had my 360, the more I started to realize that it was giving me a lot more than I expected. It's not an exaggeration to say that in some ways the 360 has helped put some of the magic back into console gaming.

The Xbox 360 has a lot of cons too. I got one with HDMI output (the Halo 3 ed, not the "elite"), which should be standard on all 360 models, but sadly isn't. Another thing that should definitely be standard is a 360 hard drive, and in my experience gamers never even consider buying a 360 package without it. Also, although I praise the Xbox 360 line-up, some console gamers may find it to be a story of many good titles rather than a few great ones, and that can be frustrating.

I was in a PS3 vs 360 group discussion one day where there was one PS3 defender debating the issue with about five 360 owners (none of whom are Microsoft fan-boys, in my opinion--they just happen to be gamers, and in this gen that just happens to typically involve owning a 360; most of these guys--myself included--never even had an original Xbox before, just a PS2 and maybe a GameCube). The PS3 guy said something like "the 360 doesn't even have a hard drive, and that really bothers me." The 360 owners all looked at each other in confusion. I'm still not sure I understand why this PS3 guy thinks the 360 doesn't have a hard drive; the best he could explain it to me was simply that there's the option to buy a 360 without one. But, like I said, most gamers don't even think twice about getting a 360 with a hard drive.

The fact that PS3 games require an install is probably a worthwhile benefit over the long run (reduced load times and all of that), but it is still a massive pain in the ass. It sucks having MGS4 interrupt the game every few hours to do a three minute install for the next chapter of the game (although I have to give Kojima Productions credit for doing that instead of having a huge half-hour install before you can even start playing the game), and including the time that it took GT5 Prologue to patch, it was well over a half hour before I was able to start playing it.

I was also debating the 360 vs PS3 issue with Fritzkrieg one day, and he mentioned that the 360 loses a lot of its appeal for gamers who don't plan on getting Xbox Live or even having their console connected to the internet. This is true, but then, the PS3 loses a lot of functionality without the internet as well. I would agree that it doesn't lose as much as the 360 does, but not necessarily enough to put it in the lead.

At least the PS3 doesn't have a tendency to croak suddenly and need to be sent away for two months to be repaired. So far my Xbox 360 hasn't broken down, but now that I have a PS3, I at least feel some reassurance that I won't be stuck with just Nintendo DS and PSP games in the case that something does go awry with it. Still, I can't shake the feeling that any console gamer who doesn't own an Xbox 360 by now is missing out. I'm not sure I can say the same for the PS3.

I bought the PS3 for Metal Gear Solid 4 and, as a distant second, for the Blu-Ray player. While this decision arguably made some sense for me, it certainly won't for most sane people. Overall, MGS4 is disappointing; it is a 3 out of 4 stars game, at best. That having been said, if you're into Metal Gear, you've got to play it.

The biggest problem with MGS4 is that the story sequences are far too lengthy. This isn't a misguided criticism that's thrown around by critics who aren't Metal Gear fans; MGS4 really does have far, far too much story time. Gamers who aren't huge MGS fans will probably also think that the story sucks, as will some gamers who are Metal Gear fans. But the senseless length of the cut-scenes is the prime issue here. It's ridiculous.

What MGS4 has going for it is that the gameplay is good while still being consistent with the MGS style (some non-MGS fans may complain, but mostly because they don't "get it"), the plot does an entertaining job of stitching together the entire story arc from the five previous Metal Gear games (Metal Gear, MG2, Metal Gear Solid, MGS2, and MGS3--every one of these games contributes in a non-trivial way to the MGS4 plot), and there is the occasional "wow" moment where something amazing happens that just completely blows me away. The bottom line is that MGS4 is about as good as MGS2--give or take a little--which is to say that it falls short of both MGS3 and the original MGS.

There's also Metal Gear Online, which is best thought of an entertaining bonus rather than a full-fledged online game. If you don't like console FPS games (stuff like Halo and Gears of War) but do like MGS games, then Metal Gear Online may have extra appeal for you as an online experience that you can't easily get elsewhere. Personally, I was only able to play it for about half an hour before I started feeling like it was a waste of my time. I may give it another chance sometime, but my initial impression is that it's too awkward and just can't compete with the single-player experience.

If there's some kind of MGS4 re-release with additional VR mission content or something of that nature, it could make for a very appealing game. With the exception of some tedious sections from Act 3, I enjoy playing MGS4 a great deal; the main problem with MGS4 is that every hour of gameplay is interrupted by an hour of cutscenes. There are some other level design issues worth mentioning: I have found the boss battles to be unnecessarily tedious, and quite often it is disappointingly easy to shoot my way through a situation rather than sneak through it--which is something that the other MGS games did a better job of promoting. But even with all of its flaws, I have found MGS4 to be a worthwhile game.

To recap, I'd rate the entirety of the Metal Gear Solid series as follows:

Metal Gear Solid - A perfect game.
Metal Gear Solid: VR Missions - Fun expansion pack.
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty - Bad story, great gameplay.
Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance - VR missions make this one of the best Metal Gear games to own.
Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes - Entertaining remake, loses some of the appeal of the original, worth trying.
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater - Great story, great game experience for Metal Gear fans.
Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence - Excellent package for Metal Gear fans; includes original Metal Gear MSX games.
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots - Worst pacing problems in the series, good gameplay.

Among those releases, MGS4 ranks near the bottom, but that's not bad company to be in.

I was forewarned not to expect much from GT5 Prologue, but I've actually been quite happy with it. The selection of cars and tracks simply does not compare with a full-fledged GT game (GT4 is so epic for content that it competes with World of WarCraft), but given that there is a wide variety in how the cars handle and the tracks feel, in some ways GT5 Prologue has more content than a racing game with lots of levels where everything feels the same (*cough*PGR*cough*).

The single player career only contains thirty events--that is, thirty single races, some of which make up familiar series such as the Sunday Cup and the Clubman's cup--and is so short that it could be played through in a single sitting by a skilled player. This is compounded by the fact that a typical player may not even be skilled enough to reach the top tier (one-third of the events), thereby limiting the field to a paltry twenty races to grind for career cash.

I was also shocked by the lack of car upgrades. I'm used to being able to buy new car parts in GT, and missing this aspect of the game actually bothers me more than the limited selection of cars. On the plus side, the lack of customization options greatly simplifies the online experience, since everybody using the same make and model of car is pretty much using the exact same car. On the down side, if you get stuck on an event requiring a specific model of car, there's no hope of being able to brute force your way through that event by simply buying car upgrades.

Online play does make up the bulk of the experience, as I'd heard. Online leaderboards are an exciting addition to the Time Trials mode, and online events make it possible to earn career cash while competing with other players. It's possible to get some coaching by downloading replay data from the online leaderboards and watching how other players tackle a particular track with a particular car.

Another exciting new feature is the addition of drift events, which I haven't tried yet. I was, however, pleasantly surprised when I left the game running and it went into a demo mode where it quietly downloaded a drift event replay from the leaderboards and started playing it automatically. I left my TV unattended for a few minutes and when I came back it felt like I was watching the GT channel.

Speaking of GT TV, there is also a feature to download free video content for GT5 Prologue, but on my connection it took roughly an hour to download a single video, and there was no option to let the download run in the background. While I appreciate having this feature, I hope that they find some way to improve it for the next release.

I'm easily going to get enough play time out of GT5 Prologue to justify having bought it. In a way, it's actually kind of refreshing to play a GT game so limited in scope that I can actually experience the majority of what it has to offer; I've tended to lack the dedication necessary to complete much of the earlier GT games. That having been said, I can scarcely wait until the full version of GT5 is released.

posted by Parappa @ 2:19 PM