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

The everyday is filled with terrifying and tumultuous trials and tribulations….though that is no excuse to outsource all your problem solving abilities to AI.


If one outsources all of their problems to AI…does one even have a life left to live?

The launch of the Metal Gear Solid Collection: Volume 2 (MGSCV2) had been on my radar for awhile now, as a long time follower of the series, in a way that was not present for the initial announcement of Volume 1, which…memory isn’t serving me at the moment as to why that was. However, in a twist of fate, the launch of Volume 1 ended up having a faint air of foreboding that encircled it, as it finally released plagued with issues, from annoying glitches, to minor hiccups, to tremendous technical errors…the whole thing was a mess, so maybe it was for the best I initially missed out, as I likely would have been put off as a result. Fast forward to Volume 2, and though I’ve only put some hours into Metal Gear Solid 4 (MGS4) thus far, the game has played wonderfully, and I’ve encountered no problems, either big or small, so the initial fears of porting a game from the PS3’s architecture, which was suppose to be a nightmare, as the cell processor made development “very complicated” according to most devs that worked on the system, were all for naught. There may be something to be said of Konami at least paying attention to what happened during the Volume one launch, and avoiding making the same mistakes the second time around, too, leading me to the phrase a broken clock is still right twice a day.


Speaking of broken clocks, fun fact: Sunny’s egg timer there, the one that looks like a duck, I still own a working replica, 18 years later, and one I found on some Japanese website I couldn’t even read, and risked debit card fraud, as I input personal financial information into a page I couldn’t verify nor understood. Totally legit, though. Still tells time, but the head movement associated with the alarm doesn’t work anymore (hence the mention of brokenness)

My initial plan for playing through MGS4, alongside the articles that would follow my gameplay experiences, as I’ve done time and time again here on active time event, were centered around the notion I would play through an act a day, and then pour all my thoughts out onto my keyboard for all to enjoy. In theory, this was a great idea. However, as I’ve discussed in the past involving game design, but a notion that can be applied to so much of life, where once there was a good theory, there may yet be a failed execution that follows, cause what looks good on paper does not necessarily translate 1:1 in all of the ways one initially desires it to be. To that point, I am now three articles in on my coverage of my runthrough of the re-release of MGS4, and I have *barely* touched upon the first act. To clarify; my writing pace is not matching my game progress speeds, as I just finished act 3 about five minutes ago, and look forward to my return of Shadow Moses come tomorrow afternoon, when I finally sink my teeth into Act 4 once again. Though, the reality of the situation is that I’m likely still quite a ways off in actually discussing my thoughts involving act 4, as I seem to be having focus issues, where extrapolating about the game is concerned.


The use of the multiple cameras in MGS4 was an interesting inclusion, I’m wondering if they didn’t reuse the concept again/most developers didn’t copy the innovative approach was because it was complete hell to maintain steady performance while doing so?

I’m truly not sure if the very real struggle I seem to be having in encapsulating MGS4 in words, is more of a me problem, or more of a game problem, as I have been quite exhausted the past several days, and yet… in spite of my enjoyment of said title, MGS4 has not lessened in all of its grand fuckiness a single iota in the following years after its initial launch, as the game is a deeply flawed final act if there ever was one. This may be a result of attempting to tie together, retcon, completely fudge, bend backwards, and totally contort twenty years of a massively complicated overall narrative that was never truly meant to all perfectly tie together, and then at the last minute someone (Kojima) wanted to really make it happen, so that was probably a huge contributing factor.


Too much lore to deal with: rivaled only by Kojima’s hubris in thinking he could square it all away so quiantly

I occasionally need to get “meta” when I write articles, in the idea that, it’s not just important to discuss the games, but to discuss the discussions about the games, and pick apart the ideas and articles about the games, too. So, right now, I’m more interested in breaking down where I may have gone wrong, in my initial approach to writing about MGS4, and I think a great oversight I made was to think I was going to be able to distill such a ridiculous amount of content that each act holds, and reduce it down to a thousand words a piece every night. Even though the gameplay side of MGS4 is…unfortunately light, which gets more true as the game goes on, there is just a crazy amount to discuss and breakdown when all is said and done. I felt rather accomplished being able to get my thoughts out about the Octocamo yesterday, but even something as “simple” as the Octocamo, ends up making you realize how stupidly complex it is too even describe how the fucking thing works, and it just gets crazier from there.


Don’t even get me started on the absurdity that is Liquid “no longer possessed” Ocelot *squints while grabbing bridge of nose*

I suppose, in an effort to try to distill my thoughts down about act one, which is only going to barely do it justice, was that the first time I picked up the game, I was perhaps overly excited to engage with the experience when it first launched, considering what a hype machine MGS4 had behind it during development, and being generally a fervent admirer of the rest of the series, that by the time I finally got my hands on it, I think Iwas initially somewhat underwhelmed by it, as the world of MGS now had a sense of groundedness to it, in ways the original trilogy never remotely fathomed to. I’d say even Portable Ops (PO), which exists in this weird limbo of MGS releases, as I swear people act as if it doesn’t exist, which staggers me, as the game was great, and I liked it even better than Peace Walker when all was said and done. I bring it up now more so due to the notion that, even within consideration of just beyond the original MGS trilogy, as PO launched after 3 but before 4, was still pretty wildly over the top.


Seen here: Meryl trying to explain all of the backstory of the series to Snake

I’m aware MGS4 has elements of its gameplay that don’t totally abandon the Kojima absurdity inherent in any game he directs, but considering that act 1 acts as almost a satire/ bitting critique of where other “modern games” (see: Call of Duty) go wrong with their focuses, MGS4 ends up kind of getting too into the allegorical side of things, and ends up losing some of the crazier charms and enthusiasm that the beginning of the series was so well known for. This of course would become a progressively bigger problem as time went on, as Peace Walker, Ground Zeroes, and Phantom Pain have loads of tonal issues, but since I’m already having quite the diffficulty focusing on just covering MGS4 with effective gusto, I’ll have to leave those critiques aside for another day.

And with that, and sadly in what seems to be an ongoing theme with my current efforts in covering MGS4, I am once again, out of time to write for the night.

Oi vey…

~Pashford