thenino85: Time to put on my hipster hat. (You've never seen it before, I imported it from a Mongolian bisexual albino organic fisherman.)

This is why we'll never get "games as art", and, much as I hate to say it, Roger Ebert is right. The point of MGS2 was that the player was Raidan the entire time. Inexperienced in war but thinking he's tough shiat. Note how Raidan was trained in VR to be a killing machine, just like the player who has most likely played multiple video games where he's artifically simulated mass murder again and again. Idolizing Solid Snake without realizing how battle scarred and weary a man like him must be. See the fan reaction to not playing as the uber-soldier in their escapist fantasy. Following someone else's directive blindly without stopping to question what kind of man you are becoming as a result. This is a theme that was developed in much more detail in all games involving Big Boss, but it shows up here in the end-game freakout of the "Colonel". This voice that was pushing the player along was in the end just a machine programmed to perform a task, and the player followed it obediently, even after it showed itself to be an artifical construct. And the bizarre circumstances of the final boss fight was Kojima biatchslapping the player with the artifical nature of the entire experience, as was all the conversations with Rose (remember the corny romance music that starts playing?), and everything having to do with Fortune and Vamp.

Note I am not saying here MGS2 was a masterpiece. It could have been, but it isn't. Kojima is too full of himself and badly needs an editor. He had some good ideas that were well ahead of their time, but implemented them in a clumsy, hamfisted way, and he is too much of an arrogant asshole to admit his mistakes. But he took a risk and tried to do something other than a variant of saving the X from the Y, goddammit, and MGS2 gets a ton of shiat for exactly the wrong reasons.

So, public reception of art defines whether it is art or not? I don't think you put your hipster hat on very tightly at all. You make the case that we are mouth breathing philistines for not appreciating mgs2, then you go all over the map.

I'll continue to tell Ebert to fark off using ICO and Shadow of the Colossus, and you can go back to your bong until you come up with a more coherent post.

Am I the only person who once ADORED the Metal Gear Solid games, but aside from MGS3 finds them absolutely painful to play these days? MGS4 included.

/Approves of the title

The Stealth Hippopotamus: I love me some video games. But I have trouble calling anything I do in a video game as "bad ass".

I don't know, I got a 150x combo in Arkham City the other day. Felt pretty good.

/I need a life