(The tl;dr companion video to this article):

The phenomenon of rose colored glasses when dealing with nostalgia often fails to recall a totally accurate picture of what we left behind…unless one was into horticulture, and they are reminiscing about a rose garden, in which case…you’ve probably found the loop hole on that idiom.


Unless one is completely crippled with anxiety, cause then you’re fucked no matter what time period you’re actively thinking about

The relentlessly nauseating nature of the gaming landscape creates this revolving door of week to week happenings that dizzies all who attempts to hang on for any length of time, with one eventually falling out of the whirlwind when they need a breather from keeping up with regular releases. Considering how expensive the every day is, let alone gaming as a hobby, setting up camp with a favored experience is a financially savvy strategy, as one full price game comes with budgeting caveats at times, let alone the abject insanity of purchasing multiple new releases in a single month. The other hurt/heal of this scenario is that so many developers attempt to make their in-game universes so vast, or even still, just full on platforms of entertainment in and of themselves, the stark reality is simply; one has absolutely no chance of ever getting to experience it all. The saving grace is that, if one does slow down to get to know a specific title, they have a gift that keeps on giving.*


…*as long as its not a Sony live service game, that is

Obviously painting with rather broad strokes here, but I merely mean to underline the point that you can’t win them all, so pick your battles. This sentiment pairs nicely with one I regularly espouse on ATE, which is the notion that one of the biggest skills to master as an adult is time management, as one has time for anything, but not everything, so prioritize accordingly. All of this representing just a sadly long wind up to saying fare thee well to longer sessions of Pokémon Pokopia, as due to keeping a hectic writing schedule, which currently has a rate of one article per day, I must always be moving forward, always onward to bigger an better things…hopefully.


Not like, Titanic big of course, cause then the whole thing is just going to shit the fucking bed…you get what I’m saying

I always try to give any new game ample time to make its case, get to know it, really spend time with it before explicating any meaningful thoughts about it, something I feel I was never able to do when I was active in the working field of gaming journalism. This is due to the fact that it always felt like such a disingenuous rush job, I almost felt at odds with the whole process, as due to deadlines, game lengths, and crunch times, the review process felt more akin to spending one day at an amusement park, and having to give final and conclusive thoughts on the overall experience, as if one would have the time and energy, especially considering how many long lines need be contended with, to get anywhere near as a full enough picture of the entirety of said attractions to be able to deliberate upon a justly meaningful manner.

*Gaming Editor: Okay Bobbert, due to time restrictions and NDA limitations, you’ve only got three days to play through Red Dead Remption 2 before writing your full review. You got this buddy! Bobbert:…Um….wow*

I think there’s more recency bias attached to that sentiment, too, as the further back you go, the more reasonable it was to address games by there standards given tighter time frames, as even as “recent” as one of the golden eras of gaming, the “PSWii60” era circa 2006, the “culture” was still “sane” enough for such expedient summations to suffice. If I were to deliberate on that last sentence without any yield imaginable and without fear of complete derailment, I may as well kiss the rest of this article fuckity bye, as I will never get to the main focus of what has now become a ridiculous build up, so I will refuse the siren’s call of detour, and carry on with my departure from Pokémon Pokopia, as another game launched today, that I’ve been looking forward to with extreme fervency, as its been a long time since I’ve revisited the end of such an epic saga…


*Cue sad guitar noises*

Yes folks, it is time to revisit the end of the Solid Snake saga, with the release of the Metal Gear Solid Collection: Volume 2 (MGSCV2), which follows both the technical travesty that represented the tumultuous release of Volume 1, and the somewhat room temperature release of the remake of Metal Gear Solid 3 (Delta), which I wrote about last year. Overall, I think people acknowledged that Konami put enough work into Volume 1 over time, that it was a dramatically improved title from the sadness that was its launch, and people liked the remake of 3 (Delta), but kind of questioned how necessary it truly was. With the release of MGSCV2, you have three games included, those three being Peace Walker, Ghost Babel, and no doubt the fan favorite of the bunch, Metal Gear Solid 4 (MGS4). This also happens to mark the first time MGS4 was released on a platform other than the PS3, so it is kind of been making waves as a big deal.


Celebrated as a big deal as it should be, as god damn what the hell wrong with the PS-fucking-3? You know…aside from the whole “five hundred and ninety nine US dollars….”

I have doubts I will be able to cover all three games before needing to move on, cause of reasons, but I have already started played MGS4, as its been sixteen years since I’ve played through the game, which is essentially another life time ago for me, all the way back to before I moved away from the East coast, which is a hell of a long time to have stayed away. MGS4 is such a strange beast (not unlike the god damn PS-fucking-3), as there are few games that represent such a divisive head space that the game occupies, as on one level, it represented the culmination of twenty years of work Hideo Kojima had committed to with the Metal Gear franchise (if we are going all the way back to the original release of Metal Gear 1 on the MSX in 1987), so everyone was hyped as shit about the release. The game even impressed upon initial release, to the point where it won a slew of Game of the Year awards, and was generally praised as a spectacular ending to a series. I was already doing freelance writing online by the time it hit the market, and did indeed review the game, way back in 2008, of which I awarded the game a 10/10, when I was still doing that numerically rated nonsensical bullshit for review scores. However, the further the distance the gaming public got in terms of MGS4, the faster the once bright and rosy opinions of the game withered, and after enough years had elapsed, you’d think MGS4 personally came out to individuals houses and kicked their dog with unrelenting vigor for the amount of shit they gave the title.

Seen here: the perception MGS4 maintained to many in retrospect

All of this and much, much more signifies quite the mark the title left on the gaming industry that, and there is plenty to talk about in the coming days ahead, in jumping back in once again, to the finale of the Solid Snake story. Speaking of which…the grand moment of curtain opening will have to wait till tomorrow, for us to more fully jump into the nitty gritty of the actual gameplay, for as ridiculous as this may sound, I had planned on having far more time today, with which to wax philosophical about MGS4, but unfortunately, I spent so many of my free minutes waxing nostalgia about the series instead, I am nearly out of time to write for the day. Fuck.


Looks like I’ll have to wait to whip out some Solid Snake until tomorrow…

I will leave you with a couple of quick thoughts, however, in that I think while MGS4 most definitely will still be (rightfully) taken to task on a number of flummoxed fumblings, I think with all of the fallout of the Konami/Kojima debacle, even with the amount of time that’s passed, people will look far more fondly upon what was with MGS4, and probably be more forgiving of some of the shortcomings that came packaged with the game. For as fantastic as the Fox Engine that powered Metal Gear Solid 5 was, the overall package of the game was severely lackluster execution, and it was easy to see the turmoil bubbling beneath the surface of the development of MGS5, with Kojima being the excessive maniac he is, and Konami being the mindlessly corporate fuck faces they usually tend to be, all was not well in the land of Metal Gear Solid, and certainly represented a greener grass situation, with MGS4 firmly in the rear view mirror….

….but more on that tomorrow.

~Pashford

(P.S., just so I don’t leave you completely hanging in the lurch with absolutely no details as to what my first *actual impressions * are in regards to the first two hours of what playing MGS4 was like, there have been no weird technical hiccups or glitches to speak of, and the game play feels as effortless as a hot knife through butter, so I think we are already sitting far prettier than the launch of the first MGS collection was, so cheers to that, mates).