Metal gear and kojima is overrated

Ok, the title says it all. Metal Gear fans shit all over Splinter Cell, calling it a bad game and a shameless Metal Gear knockoff, and I’ll have a follow-up post about Splinter Cell.

First, I want to start by saying Metal Gear is not as good as you think it is and not as innovative as you think it is.

People say Metal Gear on the MSX was the first stealth game — no it wasn’t. That would be Castle Wolfenstein.
People say Metal Gear Solid was the first 3D stealth game — it wasn’t even the first of 1998. Tenchu came out earlier that year, and Thief, though releasing a month later, was in development at the same time.

Agness Kaku, the literal translator for MGS2, said that nothing in MGS2 was above fanfic level and that Kojima wouldn’t last a day in a network TV writers’ room.
Get this — she even called Kojima a rip-off Tom Clancy.
In response, Kojima had Konami’s lawyers threaten the host of the site that interviewed her.

I agree with her. The main issue with Kojima is not only that his writing doesn’t work for games (with the long, unskippable cutscenes), it doesn’t even work for film since it breaks the number one rule of storytelling: show, don’t tell.

They just tell you everything, and it makes no sense why. Take the infamous Patriot AI scene — Raiden has things to do; he doesn’t have time to spend 9–10 minutes (yes, it’s really that long) listening to this. And the Patriot AI has no reason to tell him all this either. Why would it explain everything to a disposable pawn?

On top of that, characters constantly burst into history and philosophy discussions mid-fight for no reason.
In MGS1 they literally just outright say that the game is anti-war and anti–genetic engineering.

Speaking of MGS2 translators, a lot of the political subtext people like wasn’t part of Kojima’s vision — it was added by Jeremy Blaustein. Fun fact: a lot of Japanese Kojima fans actually prefer the English version for this reason. When else do you see that?

Kojima fans have the worst persecution complex in history — the idea that critics hated Metal Gear and were out to get Kojima, when in reality that was never true. The Metal Gear games always got good reviews, and fun fact: Konami engaged in a lot of shady behavior to make sure they did.

In reality, both MGS4 and MGS5 are very obvious recipients of media spin scams. For MGS5, Konami flew reviewers out under NDAs 5 days early and had them beat the game “in a boot camp.” For MGS4, GameSpot — not exactly the bastion of journalistic integrity — famously said they refused to review the game since Konami basically demanded positive coverage. They also engaged in kickbacks and access favoritism with other outlets.