I do find it funny that now an mostly empty, mail man simulator that's going for the art cred isn't their thing.
Either it does suck or this is another "it's cool to shit on japs because they don't listen to us whinny Americans" type thing.
I think its just the confusion factor. Most people expected something different, Kojima basically presented nothing, leaving it up to the imagination and then it turns into....a walking sim. So I think its more confusion than anything else, because its like nothing he's ever made before.
No, I intrinsically refuse because these same soy sucking Bob Chipmanesque exceptional individuals just got done creaming themselves over Outer Worlds.
Honestly though this game is a weird one. First off, there's no real epic grand quest, the game isn't frontloaded with cutscenes or story, and everything seems to stay low stakes.
Gameplaywise what it does, it does well there's no system in the game where it's an active pain in the ass. The Challenge is getting from Point A from Point B and that's the whole game, there's no real escalation just a series of different terrain and finding out how to cross with the tools you find. Like Lord of the Rings was a story about a delivery quest, but there's no epic grand battles and myriad of magical fantasy people you meet. The game is probably the textbook definition of serene, it's real fucking quiet most of the time and you'll just be walking to the next drop off point.
The game has some action, but I would not define it as action packed. The main draw are the tools and shit where you make different loadouts for your cargo. If you were expecting some spiritual successor to metal gear, this isn't it.
There's no social agenda in the game, no real GAMES R ART shit, and no Press X for Feels movie stuff.
Mechanically speaking it's not a bad game but with all the shit the game ripped off from half Life I think people were expecting way more stuff centered around a Hero's journey and not an offbeat venture open world puzzle game that can be kinda aimless at times.
Like people embraced SoC as the pinnacle of Games as Art because it was heavily stylized and centered everything around very involved and actiony boss battles. Here it's all problem solving, but it's like The Incredible Machine Problem solving where you have to figure out a way for your Goldberg Machine to work given the tools you have in your inventory.
This just sounds like it sucks and isn't worth $60. I can play autism inventory jenga simulator in a lot of games. I'm not interested in making Norma Reedus carry around metric fucktons of shit and wobble around while you fail to walk up a steep hill and roll down it and have to pick everything up it. I'll watch YouTube videos of it, but I'm sure as fuck not spending money on it.
So its looking like a courier simulator with the puzzles consisting of balancing shit on your back. Its just....well, a uh...apocalyptic mail man simulator with nobody around. You're a courier and not the New Vegas kind. Only you can....take this shit and walk it over to...another place. A lot. GRIPPING.
In terms of trolling people, this was a 10/10. He made a AAA studio give him unlimited resources, time and creativity. He made these weird, abstract, nebulous references and trailers. It looked weird, wild, wonderful and strange....
....And then it turns out all you do for most of the game is walk through an empty world while juggling crates. You're just walking across fields and plains, watching happy little trees and then trudging up mountains while playing inventory jenga. Its like he centered this amazing world and sci-fi story amongst the most mundane, boring as shit gameplay imaginable. It almost feels malicious in a way, since none of this was communicated. I know that's typical with Kojima, but it always felt good-hearted. You still had interesting story and good gameplay behind it, even if it wasn't what you expected. But here it seems he teased all that and then just went 'Its a walking physics simulator where you play a mailman which literally anybody with two legs and a map could do with 5 combat set pieces and 20 hours of cutscenes. I made Sony pay for this so I could hang out with celebrities. Fuck you lol'. I know, 'But asshole, you haven't played it!' When all the reviews and users and people are backing this up...looks pretty grim to me.
I think buying this at full price is crazy. 95% walking and inventory jenga, 5% simplistic combat with no reward. Yeah, that's a hard pass. If/when it releases on Steam, I might pay 15-20 for it. I know I sound bitter, I'm really not. I just think its stupid and a waste. All this speculation, all this wondering and it turns out its just $60 of inventory tetris and walking. That's funny.
For me, Kojima's batshit art of story-telling was always balanced out with the good game play elements which made you feel immersed in it. But this seems to have bad (struggling up terrain with inventory sounds like a chore and mind-numbingly boring) to mediocre game play elements, which makes his batshit storytelling MUCH less tolerable to me. Its the same as MGS IV for a lot of people, which did not have a lot of gameplay and people tolerated the story-telling a lot less. So the fact that it has less gameplay doesn't assuage my fears about the story. And even if he wanted to make more of an adventure/walking sim type of game, you can have good or interesting gameplay elements to it. It just sounds like he wanted something chill and serene. It feels like a game made more for him than anyone else. I guess that makes sense if you think about it, him being chained to a desk at Konami, not having any real freedom. Turns out all Kojima wanted to do was look at vistas while arranging his backpack for 30 hours.
Kojima's eccentric, batshit way of telling stories I think is embraced because the gameplay has always been there. But if it isn't, its just a fucking mess. The dude has always needed an editor. Badly. I know a lot of people love his work with or without the gameplay, but I really don't. Especially with his self-indulgent style. If you want to fuck with me, at least make it enjoyable.
Hey if you like it, I'm happy for you.
I know the gameplay is all crazy deep but I'm in the "mostly here for the story and crazy shit" camp and Phantom Pain lacked a lot of that (or rather it was all dumped into cassettes).
To be fair the story being butchered in MGSV is Konami's fault entirely. The thing with MGS V is that you can go over with different weapons and builds and strategies and just lose yourself in the gameplay.
Going from that to just walking and balancing things is going to be a shock for a lot of people.
