Ben-DutkaHey now, let's be fair, we're all entitled to our opinions. …even if they're wrong.
Although Hideo Kojima is generally seen as a visionary and perfectionist in the industry, and is widely regarded as one of the best game-makers in history, not everyone is a fan of his. Take for example Nicalis' Tyrone Rodriguez.
Rodriguez, a former IGN editor, founded Nicalis, which focuses on smaller independent productions. His team released NightSky , a physics-based puzzle platformer, and they've also handled ports of Cave Story and VVVVVV . In an interview with Indiegames.com , Rodriguez was asked what he thought about the oft-discussed declining quality of Japanese games, which led to him saying that "Konami doesn't make good stuff," and that Kojima should "stop making games and start making bad movies."
"He's terrible at making games. Metal Gear is good in spite of him. I haven't enjoyed a game of his since maybe the original Metal Gear Solid, maybe." He feels the recent ones are tedious, riddled with bad writing, bad story-telling, and bad control."
When compared to movies and books, there's no doubt that the writing in MGS games is sub-par…but then again, that also means the writing in just about any video game is sub-par, because we're still lagging well behind the other entertainment industries in that area. As for control, we're not about to get into that. We could say something about how IGN editors have often looked awfully foolish in the past, but we won't get into that, either.
You guys can, though. 😉
Sticks and stones!
may break my bones.
But Snake will never hurt me.
….wait, yeah he will.
I think the old saying starts like "People who live in glass houses…"
Other than that, I have no comment.
!
"what was that noise?"
Lmfao.
Comment of the year.
This guy is a joke and apparently has no idea what he is talking about.
Nicalis is Ridicalis
The guy is delusional.
Cool website homepage though.
http://www.nicalis.com
OPINIONS! OPINIONS EVERYWHERE!!
To hell with this guy. I jumped into the first Metal Gear not too long ago, and I'm surprised I hadn't played it sooner. Give respect where respect is due, and quit being a douche for personal gain. However, being from IGN, what can you expect?
what bugs me is that he speaks like a former Kojima Productions staff member who left because Kojima decided against his idea- I'm going with "talking carrot".
If you think that's absurd, now you know how I feel about his comment.
Last edited by Closed_Account on 3/28/2012 11:20:11 AM
oh okay mr rodriguez and just how meny awards have you won ?
Hopefully editors don't allow this perspective to infleuance them too soon. It seems to me Japanese style storytelling in gaming is basically dead with the west, and given Levine and friends slamming non-interactive cutscenes, I'm thinking things may be looking grim down the road for Kojima's style of design.
Is Metal Gear the last strong eastern franchise that hasn't fallen over here? I wonder how long it'll be before younger critics turn their nose up at the obvious foreign flavored design of the MGS franchise. Will it only take the younger, more Xbox-centric gamers, who grew up with Halo and Gears to be placed behind their cubical, keyboard before them, owning some moderate education in writing, on the payroll of IGN(or other like entity) as they freely allow their childhood preferences to proliferate preceptual quality in gaming?
This guys is an idiot.
This guy is a moron
What a douche. Guess homogenization has some way of affecting any industry 🙁 particularly the creative ones.
LOL at that guy, maybe these Indie Devs should stop charging $15 for their games and start making them longer than 4 o 5 hours, at least with MGS games i pay my $60 and have a memorable experience that last 15 hours or more.
Oh No He Didn't!!!
He probably just wants publicity like that guy that said modern japan games sucks.
Last edited by Pandacastro on 3/28/2012 12:27:06 PM
F****** Haters!
(H)aving
(A)nger
(T)owards
(E)veryone
(R)eaching
(S)ucess
Ok I'll take the comment from this silly "dev" a bit seriously. As an avid movie watcher and all… I sort of agree with him on the writing for Metal Gear Solid. (BUT THERE ARE PLENTY OF HOLLYWOOD MOVIES THAT SUCK IN STORY-TELLING AS WELL, not to mention…some other aspects)
Don't get me wrong…I think the PLOT is fantastic…it's just that there are times when one sort of thinks to themselves: "Aren't there enough plot twists/conspiracies going around?" I like what Kojima tried to do…but sending out a message in the midst of all that information is a tough thing to do…it really is. For example…MGS 2, really didn't strike me as much as MGS did near the end. Kojima may have put a nice monologue in the end there…but it was hard to really hear it out when you're just thinking "wait…so what just happened with that…and that…and that?" in the back of your head the whole time. That's how I felt. I was about to feel the same with MGS 4 since it really wrapped up all those details of the plot…but of course…I was still touched during the ending…since it really was the ending of Solid Snake's story.
HOWEVER…Kojima has made fantastic stories with MGS 3, MGS Portable Ops, and MGS Peace Walker (and MGS, but the dev isn't complaining about it). I guess the main reason the story was more fluid in this 3 was because it was really considered the beginning of "Metal Gear" and there weren't as many things/facts the player had to remember to fully understand.
But….saying that Kojima makes bad games because of some convoluted parts in the story…is just plain ridiculous. The games themselves…are FANTASTIC and FUN to play. Controls were a bit "ugh" at times…especially with MGS3, and portable ops…but that's because the gaming industry was still evolving in that regard. Peace Walker controls are quite comfortable…but if Sony had an analog stick on their PSP…it really would have been wonderful.
Anyway…there's my rant/response.
I've never been one to defend MGS2, but….
I think MGS2's ending may have been misinterpreted, MGS fans should check this video out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zx2dgVKYWWU
I don't agree with everything this guy says, but he does make some good points.
The guy is right. As a movie MGS4 were embarrassingly bad, and it didn't get any better by being at least two hours too long.
The gameplay parts were decent though.
C'mon Beam, you know that comparing MGS4 to a movie is apples and oranges. MGS4 is one of the best games to grace the PS3. The gameplay elements were more than decent and the cinematics were better than most western games this generation. Especially compared to, dare I say, Mass Effect. Boring cutscenes with no emotion and stiff looking characters. At least the the characters in MGS4 are well animated and show a streak of humanity were as in ME they are nothing more than stiff looking plastic dolls. When playing through the Mass Effect 3 demo, I couldn't help but compare it to Team America: World Police for their stiff, puppet like performances.
The game didn't score a 10/10 with nearly every publication because it was just a "decent" game. This guy is full of it. He's allowed his opinion, but it is a stupid opinion that deserves ridicule.
Last edited by Jawknee on 3/28/2012 1:30:35 PM
When a game contains like 3.5-4 hours of plain pre-rendered video and the ENTIRE story is told during those hours it SHOULD be compared to movies in my opinion, cause really, that's what it is.
And as a CGI movie it is very, very bad. I think it's about time someone says that. It is not good storytelling, it is not good movie making. The game is overrated to the extreme in these regards.
Why mgs4 get away with it has to be because the cut-scenes of most other games suck even worse. But that in itself is no excuse, nor does it make mgs4 better from an objective point of view – only relatively speaking.
But as opposed to other games, where the cut-scenes usually are short and to the point, in MGS4 they just never ends, never. It was a serious pain to watch.
The gameplay was good, true. I like stealth games, so that was all cool. I don't think it is dramatically better than other good stealth games I can recall playing (mainly Thief and Hitman), but it was good. But the cut-scenes… Oh boy, they almost killed me.
Last edited by Beamboom on 3/28/2012 2:35:30 PM
Your comparisons make no sense. It's not a CGI movie. It's a video game. The 4th in the series that wrapped up lose ends from the prier 3 games. MGS's universe is much deeper than most games so of course it requires longer cutscenes to tell the complete story. It's not some artificial, generic "let's save the universe from an alien invasion" story with stiff voice acting, animations and characters. The game has history and explores real world history and crisis'.
I don't mean this as a knock, I really don't, but perhaps you have a short attention span as its seems evident you dislike any game that takes control away from you for more than a few minutes. This idea that it nevers ends is an exaggeration as the game is only about 20 hours long. Obviously it ends.
Last edited by Jawknee on 3/28/2012 2:46:49 PM
I didn't mean it literary forever of course. It just felt that way while watching. It was terribly cliche (especially the character profiles), littered with really poor jokes, horrible dialogues and unfocused nonsense.
I am sorry, I really am, but I can't say anything else than what I mean. And the storytelling in this game, who in its entirely took place during cgi video clips, were simply bad. Had the scenes been glued together and played before a crowd in a theatre it would cause most of the audience to leave before the first hour had passed.
And I don't support the "it's good… for a game" kind of mentality (speaking in general terms and not referring to you directly Jawk). We need to put that kind of attitude behind us and dare to take this medium more seriously. I think it's about high time!
Last edited by Beamboom on 3/28/2012 2:59:41 PM
Yes, well, considering that Beamboom is also someone who thinks all cut-scenes should forever disappear, and doesn't seem to really like any story unless cut-scenes are absent, I'm not sure he's the kind of person who would really appreciate MGS.
That is taking it a tad too far Ben, but yes, I do happily advocate storytelling through this mediums own strengths. That is true. I also firmly believe there is enormous untapped potential for this medium to tell stories in a way no other medium is able to. And I find that much, much more exciting than watching hours of poor cgi renderings, yes.
So, I'll say you are 70% correct Ben. 🙂
o_ó MGS4 is a game! Asura Wrath would classify more to be a movie.
All of those cinemas did what ME fans would kill to have in this moment. Give me a good resolution.
Last edited by Oxvial on 3/28/2012 3:08:03 PM
What do you mean poor CGI renderings. MGS4 STILL has some of the best graphics on the PS3. Definitely had the best at the time.
I used to look forward to playing my final fantasy games and all of the sudden I would hear the disc load and I KNEW a cut scene was starting. I was so excited when a new cutscene started and these didn't even have voice! It seems you get upset when you lose control?
Stringing together all the movie parts and putting them in a theatre doesn't work here, its the end of a series, and everyone would be lost. Did you play all of the other MGS games? Perhaps they were too long because you didn't know what was going on, or hadn't developed a connection to the characters since like when was MGS released 1998?
Japanese story telling likes to take its time, and just because you might be ADHD doesn't mean that its terrible writing. Was there not enough pew pew boom boom in it for you?
You compare this to hollywood movies when most hollywood movies have terrible cliched scripts, predictable outcomes and more explosions than you can count. This has an actual thought out story with a lot of underlying themes, its not just a plot put there as an excuse for an explosion like most movies and even games plots are used for.
I wonder when people will get sick of explosions? Yeah they are cool but they seem to brainwash people into thinking a movie was good because it had a lot of them.
All of this said, I do think MGS4 is a little over rated. I LOVE it, but it is still over rated. MGS3 was my personal favourite, if they could have just translated the controls from MGS4 to it I would play that game forever.
I also admit that the controls are "terrible" but like any self respecting human being I adapted and they became second nature.
Even if I'm only 70% right, that's hardly "taking it too far." 😉
And like I said, other than being extremely vague, none of you ever bothered to explain why it's completely necessary to ditch cut-scenes for good. I mean, I'm sorry, but you didn't even come close. So it's hard to take what you say seriously about a series that has thrived on cut-scenes, and one that the vast majority of gamers would consider to be fantastic, especially from a story standpoint.
@Ben: None of us said 100% ditch, we simply believe in a shift of focus away from borrowing the story telling capabilities of the movies, over to using the genuine properties of this medium. I even explicitly stated at the end of the discussion that there indeed are plenty exceptions. But this is all better explained at the PSX forums, for anyone reading this and are curious.
An excellent forum it is too. Come one come all! 🙂
@Xenris: Rent a blu-ray movie and you'll see good cgi renderings. This is not games graphics we talk about here, it is movie clips. These cut-scenes are files read from your blu-ray disk and played through a movie player.
There is no theoretical difference between scenes from a CGI movie like Avatar or the Pixar movies, and pre-rendered cut-scenes in a game. We are just grown used to them being much, much worse, qualitatively speaking.
… And this has nothing to do with explosions, not sure where that came from. Although I'm pretty sure your average game beats just about any movie ever made on the explosion counter. 😀
Last edited by Beamboom on 3/28/2012 4:07:37 PM
"@Xenris: Rent a blu-ray movie and you'll see good cgi renderings. This is not games graphics we talk about here, it is movie clips. These cut-scenes are files read from your blu-ray disk and played through a movie player."
::facepalm::
It's not a movie. The same could be said about ME or Uncharted. Funny you disparage MGS4 as having bad CGI renderings when ME3 is infinitely worse.
For the record, MGS4's cutscenes aren't even CGI renderings. The cutscenese are done with the ingame engine just like Uncharted, God of War III, ME3 and so many other games this generation. It was one of the first games to do that and it's really telling when a 2008 game looks, runs and plays better than a game released in 2012.
Beamboom, the only fair comparison in such an argument is to compare MGS to other video games.
And when you do that, it's plain as day that the story, choreography, and just about everything in that production is top-tier in this industry. Compare ANY game to great movies in terms of storytelling and it's not really a contest.
@Ben; I agree that the comparison is unfair.
However I also believe that we are at a point in time where such comparisons can begin to be made. Not as "games being movies", but games being GAMES. Call me optimistic, call me naive, but I really believe "we've seen nothing yet". Furthermore I am of the opinion that MGS4 really is quite overrated as a storyteller. I just think so. Or to put it differently: Gaming will never get respected outside the gaming sphere or receive their Oscars if we settle with MGS4 level storytelling. Never.
However, and just to state the obvious, the claims that "he should stop making games" and "start making bad movies" and so on is unnecessary. But I guess that's what is required to get quoted.
@Jawk; I think the cut-scenes both in Uncharted and Mass Effect are better from an movie point of view. I even think they are *clearly* better. In the case of Uncharted it's also better graphics. Again – clearly better in my opinion.
But the topic here is not Uncharted or Mass Effect, it's MGS. That's why I comment on that title this time around.
But since you do draw the comparison with those titles:
From a movie/"traditional storytelling" perspective I really don't think neither Uncharted or Mass Effect is that bad, really, not if we ignore the obvious visual superiority of a cgi movie. The dramaturgy in both those titles, the dialogues, characters and especially the arc of the stories are much, much better than MGS4. The scenes are there for a reason, they pull the story forward. They simply are much, much better reference points for good, traditional storytelling in a game.
(All in my opinion, of course)
Last edited by Beamboom on 3/29/2012 2:54:30 AM
When all else fails… slander someone who has done great things.
You'll get attention that way.
Gee, a jumped up game magazine editor with delusions of developer status things he can tell one of the figures of the industry to bugger off and make crap movies? Wow, and I thought Itagaki had ego issues….
What drugs is this guy taking?
My opinion is that he is jealous. He also goes on to say he hates the "indie developer" label, he thinks he is a full fledged game developer on par with Kojima because his tiny company does stuff too.
Last edited by WorldEndsWithMe on 3/28/2012 1:16:32 PM
Move along…nothing to see here!
Just another faceless attention whore wanna-be trying to get his name back on IGN again
And that's my opinion.
Great article 🙂
what attention whore. Don't leave your nice-paying job if you want $.
What a fool. Its people like this that make me facepalm.
Its almost as bad as Jaffe sometimes……
Maybe video game stories aren't always supposed to have the bestest realistic stories, but like a comic or movie it's just meant to be what it is, convoluted conspiracies and all.
You might be onto something. :p
I definitetly disagree with this guy because imo very few video games have as much depth and substance as the Metal Gear Solid series. I expect there will be more statements like these after fez creator received applause at gdc for saying japanese games suck.
Never heard of this guy of company but I'll be sure not to support any games with Nicalis attached to it. I love MGS 4, it was a game that didn't care about anyone but the fans of the series. I loved how the story moved along and everything started connecting with characters from the past games. Can't wait to check out Kojima's next game.
Has he noticed that all the games that have failed from the east Kojima never had a hand in. It doesn't sound like he's put out anythng groundbreaking either. He wants press is all.
He worked for IGN that is enough for me to know he is a moron. His comments are absurd to say the least, and yes it definitely feels like he is just trying to get attention.