The Gamer's Quarter

[Adilegian]

I've written an analysis of Metal Gear Solid 2 over the past month, and I've subconsciously had posters of SB's and TGQ's likes in mind as an ideal audience. I've finished this beast at last--I take all my own screencaps, which is a chore--and I wanted to let anyone interested know about it.

I don't sign onto forums just to solicit, and I had asked Shaper if it was okay for me to post a topic about this here. I hope that my frequency over at SB kind of makes my transition here a little smoother than... well, smoother than it would be had I just shown up out of the blue to say HEY READ MY THINGS.

But anyway.

http://www.deltaheadtranslation.com/MGS2/DOTM_TOC.htm

Thanks for reading, if you do!

[dessgeega]

i've only skimmed this thus far, but i think the use of the past tense really weakens your analysis of the game. i think games need to be considered as existing works, which persist in our culture, not as past events which are no longer relevant.
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[parkbench]

I'll read this now, but have you seen this? It's fairly interesting.

[Adilegian]

Hi Dess!

[silentmatt]

I don't have time right now to read any more than the preface and the terms... but I definitely bookmarked the site for further reading when I have a bit more time. Looks interesting.


One suggestion: make an index.html page - even if it is just a copy of your TOC. It isn't very good to let people see the folder structure of a site when all they wanted was to get back to the TOC (I assumed it was at the root).
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PSN: Twitch_City ||| Wii: 8083 5371 5767 6700
"Jadis, si je me souviens bien, ma vie était un festin où s'ouvraient tous les coeurs, où tous les vins coulaient."

[deisied]

I guess. But considering there's a TOC link right at the bottom of every page, I'm not sure why it matters too much, or why you even had the problem.

Edit: Fix'd, by the way.
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zanzibar breeze

[parkbench]

I want to like it, and I do. I enjoy the comparisons being drawn but, I'm on page 8 and you still haven't explained why you're doing any of this. You start out with very vague explanations of the "maps" of the series, and then go on for several pages to draw the comparisons between MGS1 and MGS2, but you have no thesis: what is the point of what you're saying?

Even if you sprinkled little hints here and there that would be fine. Right now I feel like I'm aimlessly wandering through this thought process and I don't understand why. What's are you postulating? "MGS2 is the bizarro MGS?" You have to say something, I feel, because otherwise the words have no weight.

my two cents. i'm going to keep reading.

edit: i will say that i enjoy the conclusion this is beginning to draw in later pages--and i think it makes a lot of sense. i have been..acquainted with mgs2's plot for a long time, but not until now did i realise how closely the entire game experience sought to emulate the truths of the story: that is, raiden as a poorly made copy of snake, a copy that can emulate but not replicate, and how this is pervasive in the work.

[Adilegian]

Hey!

[parkbench]

I can retrospectively see why you did what you did, but I felt that it wasn't warranted to make the reader feel like they were wandering for 8 pages or so. I mean 1 page is fine but after many pages the reader--or at least I did--wonders "what is with all this super precise, almost anal information?" Again, I now understand why but it just seems like it was thrown in there after the vague explanation of the 'maps' thing.

Even when your thesis is at the end, you have a thesis statement at the beginning. I was just looking for some kind of clue as to why you were explaining the similarities which could almost seem incidental of the game's bosses and stuff. If you had postulated near the beginning that MGS2 was a systematic deconstruction of everything we knew about MGS, everything that happened in Shadow Moses but with all the reverse results, or something like that, and that it boiled down to every scenario I would be much more willing to read these descriptions.

I mean, maybe you did say these things. I'll re-read the whole thing one more time later. But I felt like if they were, they weren't clear.

I still liked it in the end.

[Adilegian]

[parkbench]

ps, sorry if you felt like i was trampling on your work. i know what it's like to have a labor of love and it sucks hearing shit like that about it. but i wouldn't be saying it if i didn't think it were true.

glad to hear about the reorg. make an ORG CHART. or at least that's what dilbert taught me.

[Adilegian]

[parkbench]

Well, i mean. i'm sure there's a philosophical or artistic word for what i'm talking about. like, POSTMODERNIST DECONSTRUCTION, but i'm not educated enough (yet! ) to really understand what that means.

now this irks me; i have to find a better word. ;O

org charts are just some thing in the corporate world that dilbert makes fun of.

ps on the map analogy: i think it would help too if you fleshed out the map analogy a little more. i don't think it was driven home quite so the reference to the map was a little jilting--you go from borges to the MGS series map and though i understood it i think it was a JARRING JUMP.

[internisus]

Adilegian: This is really great so far! Though I haven't yet gotten to discussions of content and thus haven't reached those aspects that interest me most, you're doing a great job at plotting out the formal relationships between the games. The series and scenario maps are perfect models in this case.

Since I'm not finished reading yet, I'm just posting to let you know about a typo in section VIII:

Vamp survival as the Harrier's pilot recalled Liquid's survival as the Hind-D's pilot.

Seems small now, but rather confused me at first.

[Adilegian]

[D-A-I-S]

by the way, ]NeoGAF found this.

[Intentionally Wrong]

I saw it linked on fourhman.com so I figured I'd better take the time to read it all the way through. I liked it! I'd like to say more but I found myself in such agreement that finishing your analysis left me with nothing to say.

[JasonMoses]

[Intentionally Wrong]

[Shapermc]

[Adilegian]

Hey! (I haven't been ignoring this thread, in case my absent posts had implied as much. I just haven't had much time to respond with the depth I'd like.)

[dessgeega]

here at the gamer's quarter, we like words.

i'm going to try to get around to reading this soon, too.
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[Adilegian]

[Shapermc]

It's funny that you posted today, because I just finished reading this.

First I was mildly confused because you took to analyzing the structure of the game itself rather than the narrative. The preconceived notions of analysis on MGS2 basically point to this being an analysis on the story and you don’t quickly enough let the reader in on this. So I continued on with my map in hand.

Second (while still mildly confused on when you were getting to the story) I was feeling where this was trimmed down (as you stated in the preface). I kept thinking that you needed to include more; more about the MGS2 ninja, more about how certain events started, more about the outcomes of these events. Then I slowly started to pick up on what you were getting at.

After that I started to feel like you left too much in. This is twofold really. Primarily you left too much in before you really start to state how things pull together, and then when you do many of the points seem moot or more like a list that is far too detailed. Secondly there is a lot of reference (and assumed knowledge) of the first Solid game which isn’t really explained as why it’s important.

Finally I was devastated. While not explicitly stated your analysis basically points out that this game is worthless without it’s mirror: MGS1. You shine your light on all the points and places about the game that are truly brilliant, though by doing this you expose its fraudulence. As a huge fan of the second game I never really liked MGS1. My only experience with the game before the sequel was a very sleep deprived weekend in high school where I watched my friend complete the game with his overly machismo commentary (he had already beaten it and knew all the tricks). After playing and falling in love with MGS2 I tried to go back and play MGS1 but found myself unable to play beyond Sniper Wolf.

This leads me to my recommendation that, since you provide your opinion on the sequel in the preface, that you also let the reader in on your MGS1 experience. I have no idea if you love/hate/feel indifferent towards the first game, or even if you had played it before playing MGS2.

I find it incredibly interesting that every time I run into a critic of MGS2 that their defense relies heavily upon the fact that they love Snake and MGS1. I loved Raiden. It was a surprise to me when I was no longer playing as Snake, but I never craved his return either. I still connected with the game similarly to how you describe the relationship between the actor/character/player goals, but in a completely different way. I hardly noticed the connections between the first and second game on my play through of MGS2, and the ones I did were by far the most obvious (the torture section for example). I was Raiden, as intended, and grew with him. By the time we were fighting Solidus Snake in the destroyed NYC I was at full tilt, and then the game ends. I felt like it had just ramped up to the inevitable point the game would reach, though I did not expect that to be the end/moral of the game.

My only other comment is that this is a brilliant body of writing. Don’t let my initial impressions bother you, they were just that: initial. As a result of those impressions I would like to recommend that perhaps with the Terms section you build a clearer thesis for the reader to shatter some preconceived notions of the analysis. After reading this I would love to see a sort of mirror to your analysis from someone looking for the same things you are in the game design but by having the game stand alone, completely. Were I a stronger writer, or more knowledgeable in formal analysis I would try to make the effort myself, but I don’t think I have the stamina for the task.

PS: I knew reading this would make me want to replay MGS2. This analysis also had the unfortunate side effect of making me want to attempt MGS1 again… I do have that GC remake (Twin Snakes) that I never opened.
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[Cycle]

Excuse me while I butt in here, but I never played the second and wouldn't mind playing the first again, is twin snakes a good way to do it?
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[dessgeega]

nope.

i forget exactly why. do i remember the cutscenes are even longer and more terrible. play the playstation version.

better yet, play ghost babel.
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[Swimmy]

No way, the cutscenes are better! They go from being sensible to completely ridiculous, which--hell, why not? Snake does one backflip in the original game, and in Twin Snakes he does. . . a lot more. Almost one every cutscene. He backflips over a door for no reason. There is bullet time. It is amazing and stupid.

But the rest of the game, ick. The ability to shoot in first-person breaks a lot of boss fights, especially Ocelot and Psycho Mantis. None of the levels are designed with the MGS2 abilities in mind, so it doesn't play as well. It has less of that arcade feel that made the original so great. It's glitchy as hell and I think there are even a couple seams in the textures that you can shoot right through. It's a mess, don't bother. Or find a friend who has the movie theater unlocked so you can just watch that.
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"Ayn Rand fans are the old school version of Xenogears fanboys."
-seryogin

[dessgeega]

i remember there being a scene where grey fox slices a slab out of the ceiling with a sword and then kicks it at someone.
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[Shapermc]

What if you find a lot of the PS1 version mostly unplayable anyways? Would it be ok to play Twin Snakes then?

Also, what am I missing? I mean, I really, really, really don't like Ghost Babel.
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[dessgeega]

a heart, apparently ;_;
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[dessgeega]

ghost babel is what metal gear solid would be if it was a videogame.
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[Adilegian]

Responses!

[Lestrade]

[Shapermc]

[dessgeega]

[Lestrade]

1-up Zine had running heads with trivia and other miscellany; we could add a "Dessgeega Says" spread in TGQ!

[dessgeega]

it could be accompanied by a little dr. wright-esque caricature of me, rapping at a blackboard with a pointer.
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[dessgeega]

ALSO

[Adilegian]

[Dracko]

[dessgeega]

psycho puppet dyke is my favorite metal gear boss ever
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[Dracko]

Most definitely.

I get shivers just thinking about it.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[dessgeega]

what nice lines your clavicles have, snake.
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[Intentionally Wrong]

[dessgeega]

nah, that's silly.

this thread makes me want to replay the game again. i think i will!
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[dessgeega]

i am now replaying metal gear gbc. officially! i played through the first three stages and was only spotted three times. one of those was an infrared laser, though, so it only half counts.

outer heaven??
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[Dracko]

Me too!

Though I'm trying very hard not to be spotted, reloading every time I do. Tiresome in many respects, certainly, but it's a challenge and the prospect of starting over again always encourages one to pay attention.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[dessgeega]

slasher hawk gets such a great send-off.

also, "a boomerang??" > "a hein d??"
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[Lestrade]

I just popped in MGS2 to test something on my TV and ended up playing it for a bit. I think I'm hooked again!

[dessgeega]

stage five completed! why don't any of the other metal gear games have a puzzle built around the cardboard box? i was only spotted once - twice if you include setting off a c4 in the wrong location. but it was worth it for jimmy's reaction.

there is totally an allusion to masturbation in snake's conversation with jimmy. right afterward i called mei-ling to save my game, and she said "you're not doing something else while you're playing this game, are you?"

!
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