Why this game is.. so.. bad..

[slaw]

This game is so bad, and unless your into self punishment and frustration to bring your blood to a boil, skip this bastard and spare yourself.

So where to start.
1. 1080p on TV = 24hz or 24 FPS
2. Parrying
3. Dodging (apparently purchased? where?)
4. Camera Sticking
5. Lack of Health
6. Blade Mode Rotation??
6. Boss Spams to Instant Death

1080p Issue
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This game looks great at 60hz (60 FPS), But you won't achieve that until you check the forums or go Googling away wondering why the frame rate sucks. Much of your first experience with this game, particularly the boss fights, will be tragically flawed because of this.

Parrying Mechanic
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This is REQUIRED to beat most bosses and to stun most of the stronger enemies. Yet, the tutorial has you practice this once and the mechanic itself is flawed with a 50/50 chance of pulling it off at 24 hz. This requires perfect timing, many times you have to wait until the hit has nearly connected to trigger a block and pull a parry. Even with that, depending on the boss, they might have dodged / distanced themselves from even being affected.

Dodging?
------------
There's a dodge mechanic. Wait, there's a dodge mechanic? Oh yeah.. we included that as part of the game.. but.. you apparently have to buy it? It's extra. W.T.F Kojima? I still have zero idea if I have it and could care less at this point. I've pumped 19 hours into this game, customized my suit, added life, energy, extra moves, etc. etc. and still havn't stumbled across this. If it's in the game.. I dunno where it is and at this point.. I'm all out of ♥♥♥♥♥ to give.

Camera Sticking
----------------------
Your in a battle, your surrounded by 3 or 4 enemies. Two or three will be the 'tougher' variety requiring several slices until you can dismember them. As you lock onto various ones to engage, the camera will stick into the walls when close by. Good lord that is frustrating. Not seeing anyone isn't the worst part, this game requires that the player jam the stick into the direction of the attacks to block them correctly. With this issue.. good luck.. good luck getting that parry mechanic to trigger either. This has ruined my experience with this title several times.

Lack of Health
-------------------
What's with the lack of health in this game? I don't understand it. Not enough med pack recharges to help the player. Sure, you can get killed or restart your checkpoint and you'll gladly be given all the health you need.. but unless your Mr. Perfect, your not lasting through some of the more tedious boss fights requiring an utter act of god to finish without health recharges.

Blade Mode Rotation
----------------------------
Blade Mode includes a rotation mechanic. Say what!? This was never covered in the tutorial and it certainly is never explained in the story mode. W.T.F Kojima? There are moments in this game, particularly two boss fights that absolutely reinforce and require this. Yet.. it's not explained.. back to the google machine.. back to the forums.. back to YouTube. What's worse about this is that rotating the blade can trigger the blade to strike. And when this happens, it's a --very-- bad thing in the two boss fights requiring it. I don't need to say more than, bad design that leads to a puzzling frustration.

Boss Spam
---------------
Finally, most games have boss spam, it's a cycle of things they do with visual or audio queues to tell the player what's coming. This game uses a red flash for an intended attack. However, what's worse is the orange halo, that's when you can't block it, it's an intended "RUN LIKE HELL" situation where you better dodge this (where's the dodge mechanic!??!) or your taking damage.

The final boss is the worst for this, as expected, except, his attacks are mainly of the orange variety. If you don't move your ass and get away from it your hosed for 25 hp, and when you've got 160 hp total, your just 7 hits total from being done in the fight. This fight btw is utter BS in gaming. A boss with 200% health, you recharge zero health in the entire fight, your out of med packs at this point so your either going to pull off a miracle or it does you in. You'll start out spamming attacks and dodging or blocking what you can. You'll finally make it to a split second, time stopping, blade mode event where he is dropped huge hunks of machinery at the player. You need to rotate the blade to just the right line up to hit all of the boxes to make it to the next part of the same blade mode event. Wait.. what?? Say that again???? Yeah that's right, you have 3 of these to do in the same blade mode with the same amount of blade mode time and this only gets better.. rotating the blade can trigger it to go off. Damage of the machinery variety is almost certainly an instant death when it happens.

I've played through 19 hours of this hell hole. I've managed to make it to the last boss and I've probably played and restarted that fight 100 times trying to pull off a miracle. However, as I've mentioned before, I'm all out of ♥♥♥♥♥ to give on this one folks.. it's a bad design and it's utterly punishing for a 'normal' mode game. They should have renamed them. "Frustrating", "Hair Pulling", and "Give yourself a stroke". I don't completely understand the game design at this point but I'm over it. I've come full circle on this title, any game requiring more time than this to beat, particularly the final boss, after 100 attempts, 100 fully frustrating attempts, forget about it. I've got better things to do with my time than that.

So in conclusion. Save your bucks. And if you are a poor soul, who like myself, purchased this peice of digital waste. I feel for you. I even looked for a way to refund this to Steam in hopes of circumventing anymore torture after the first boss fight was an utter annoyance. I've suffered and choked down the rest of this game up to this point. What a steaming pile this has been.

[5M0k1N]

lolwut
this game is very easy. i guess coming from skyrim it might look a bit hard but its not
l2p

[Harshsin]

Works perfectly maxed out at 60 FPS and haven't had any difficulties at beating it on Hard

[Decider]

I'm playing on hard and this game is still VERY easy, so uh..?

[Overman]

git gud, this game is one of the best "speed kill" action game

[Miqs]

Only thing I can agree with you is the 24fps issue, everything else is a skill issue which you clearly are lacking.

Have you tried the community fix (which is stickied here) and if you're on W8 you'll have to put it to compatibility mode for W7 for the fix to work, if it works since it's not guaranteed. The problem is with HDMI cable messing something up, you can switch it to something else if you have.

[Azrael]

Good explained point of view and opinion, but you should fix the grammar: "your" =/= "you're","you are"...

[slaw]

Azrael, thanks for the comment.

As for the rest, feast upon this turd and fool yourselves longer. It's uninstalled to the vast wreckage of the gaming graveyard.

I really enjoy the Metal Gear franchise, I've been a long time fan spanning all the way to the NES installations in the 80s. I --really-- wanted to love this game but there is no bridging that divide.

A game at this difficulty level on a normal setting will lose 95% of the audience. People just won't buy it.

From a business standpoint, you lost. Kojima and the Metal Gear Series can suffer a few of these without a huge problem. But you will notice they have not rushed to hash another MG in this style since. And my guess is, he won't push for another title like this anytime soon.

Call it the best speed kill action game if you like, if it fails to grab most gamers and generate ample revenue for the investors then you are out of business.

Also comparisons to Skyrim, this is not. This is a completely different genre. The only thing close to this game in difficulty is Demon's Souls or Dark Souls. Both of which I loved and enjoyed playing. The difference there is, they are skill based, but they don't suffer from the many issues I've outlined. They do this well.

Take care folks, it's supposed to be about fun, not frustration.

[5M0k1N]

some of us need a bit of a challenge to have fun

its also funny you talk about frustrating and then you mention dark souls. that game wasnt really hard, it was slow paced, it had traps and what not and a lot of things were really obscure about it (like weapon scaling) so if any game on that list gets the most frustrating award, it definately goes to dark souls not MGR

and no, this game isnt hard at all, that only shows the previous games you were playing were too easy (thats why i mentioned skyrim). if you want to try some few tough ones send me a message ill provide you a list of games im nowhere (nor i will ever be) close to 100% them. MGR and dark souls? both 100%ed very easily. (dark souls is actually a cake compared to some stuff in MGR and the game gets really easy after a few hours as well, not really sure why that game keeps being used as an example of a hard game)

[slaw]

I get you, challenge is a welcome part of gaming, it makes the game more memorable and brings you back for more. I'm all for higher levels of difficulty offering that.

I realize this is a completely subjective post about difficulty in gaming. It's different for everyone. You are absolutely right about Dark Souls, it is a slower paced game, up until you are facing the bosses, some of which require a very quick study and plenty of split second decisions.

I certainly don't proclaim that I am the best gamer out there and I don't want people to take my post as the written word of God. I just think quite a lot of this should have been designed better and the above categories were painful sore spots that plagued the gameplay.

I disagree with you about previous games I've played being too easy, again, a subjective viewpoint. It's up to the gamer to decide what's hard or what's easy. I think the design decisions in this game made it suffer and made it feel more punishing for mistakes.

No one likes to rinse / repeat dozens of times to finally 'get it'. That's when you lose a lot of gamers.

As always, it really should be more about the fun and not frustration.

[Supersolenoid]

With regards to the dodge mechanic - you simply press square and x (on a ps3 pad-sorry can't remember what the actions do now-played on ps3) and a direction, and you will do an 'attack-dodge. ' it's actually rather brilliant in that it keeps you aggressive whilst effectively dodgingfor a short burst. it also allows you to interupt combos and then continue that same combo after the dodge. That was my favourite mechanic. Like combo hit 1-combo hit 2-dodge-combo hit 3-etc. Very fluid.

In terms of purchasing it- I can't remember- but I think it's justan ability u can purchase very early. It's not as if you are locked out of it for any significant amount of time.

This dodge mechanic was very very useful during boss fights i tell thee!

And in terms of rinse and repeat. I actually really disliked this game the first time i played the demo. Then I tried again,and again to figure out its' systems. Then I loved it. I think I played the demo around 50 times before eventually buying it day one on ps3

[Lu2]

dodge is useful but totaty optional.this game relies on parry which has incredible large "parry window" .game is very easy compared other their titles like
god hand

[Play Metaphor]

Another "critical objective thinker" who dismisses all opposite opinions as turd and yet when people call his own as such they're fallacious to do so. Lovely double standard.

To people who are interested in the game: Watch a youtube or two about it. The genre is kept alive by Platinum through MGR and Bayonetta, especially now that DmC: Devil may cry and Tameem killed the other good franchise

If you hate their games you basically hate the genre and it's just not for you. Nothing wrong with that.

[Rejjie Sweet]

Originally posted by Akashi:

Another "critical objective thinker" who dismisses all opposite opinions as turd and yet when people call his own as such they're fallacious to do so. Lovely double standard.

To people who are interested in the game: Watch a youtube or two about it. The genre is kept alive by Platinum through MGR and Bayonetta, especially now that DmC: Devil may cry and Tameem killed the other good franchise

If you hate their games you basically hate the genre and it's just not for you. Nothing wrong with that.

You say DMC is dead. Explain how, have you even played the reboot?

[Strider]

MGR is like God Hand.
Hard but fair.
Learn to play it properly as all the issues you mentioned were not present with me.
When parry is timed right I finish enemies with 3 - 4 hits ending with them being pile of parts and trash.
But your Q.Q is ever bit overdramatic as I hate the "Oh, this game is hard, I cannot master it therefore it sucks" ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ routine.

[Lyrad8791]

Just to clarify, this game is "hard"? Also, this game should not be mixed with the rest of the MG franchise as it is a completetly different style and genre of game. The series was also supposed to end after MG3. Grow up people and play the game. enjoy the game, and love the game, OR get done, and get gone. I loved the franchise and I won't be playing this game simply because it isn't the same style as the previous games, nor does it make sense to have in the series after all is said and done.