20th March 2004, 9:55 PM
OB1 Wrote:Two walking speeds is most definitely not analog, ABF.Eh, yes it is. If you tilt the stick a little, he crawls. If you tilt it full, he runs. That is analog controlling. Now, it's not GREAT analog controlling, it's not incremental. But it's still there.
Now, I just now finished Twin Snakes. Here is what I think. Keep in mind that I have included spoilers all over this review, and parsing them with tags would make for a very hard-to-read post. So don't even read this if you don't want stuff spoiled for you.
First off, the game is gorgeous. It is considerably better-looking than MGS2 was. This is most apparent in the character modeling. When I saw a tear in Meryl's eye, dirt and smudges on Snake's face, or the bruises and blood on Liquid's face, or how Snake had a visible layer of sweat on his body after the torture scene, I saw an improvement over MGS2. There is very little noticable aliasing, and the polys themselves are more detailed.
Second, the cut-scenes. I liked the additions. I thought many of them added to the original storyline in a good way. I felt that the superior graphics were able to better convey emotion, making the scenes with Meryl more real. Also, I could much more easily see that the Snakes were twins, because the PSX models didn't seem to have the same faces. I also like how the Snake/Meryl relationship was deepened, should you decide to brave the torture. What did irritate me, however, was how almost all of the characters with accents sound straight American now. Mei Ling lost her Korean accent, Naomi's British accent was totally missing (and honestly, since she was quite important it was hard for me to associate her with her new voice), and others like Nastasha and Sniper Wolf retained them, but they were much thinner. I did not like that. Meryl's voice was different too, but it was an improvement. The old Meryl sounded like Peppermint Patty. Those minor gripes aside, the additions and subtle alterations were well worth the price of admission.
Gameplay: This is what really disappointed me the most about this game. For starters, I gotta say that I loved having the first-person aiming mode. I also liked having the far more intelligent enemies, as these helped to somewhat cancel out the decreased challenge from the aiming. However, what really disappointed me was just how similar the game really was to the original. It seemed as though they did not even go so far as to change up the soldier's routes. I had hoped that there would be some gameplay surprises thrown at me. One thing that made MGS2 harder was that the soldiers were often placed well enough to get in your way at the worst times. Also, in TS, evasion was much easier. As soon as you leave an area, your caution meter resets! Now, the tension of surviving a coordinated assault is lessened, as they'll forget all about you the minute you leave the room. Now, I played on Normal mode, so I don't know if this applies to the harder modes, but it was still incredibly disappointing.
It must also be noted that the addition of the M9 made two parts of the game far, far easier than they once were (those being the Nuke Building 1F and the Caves), as now you can easily neutralize enemies that were either very hard to kill because you couldn't use weapons (Nuke Bldg) or invincible to weaponry, period (wolves in the Caves). But, the other weapons were retooled nicer. I liked being able to stand and use the sniper rifle, for instance.
Now, there was gripes about the poor analog control. Well, it really wasn't an issue for me because sneaking was so rarely required. There were so few points in the game that required real sneaking, of course because the game was originally designed without it in mind. But, I do have issues with the controls. For one, this was D-Pad all the way, but I sorely missed the PS2's analog D-Pad, for with it you could sneak without going analog. I missed the extra shoulder buttons. I missed the analog face buttons period. Now, if I aimed the weapon, I had to fire a shot. In MGS2, slowly releasing the fire button lets you conserve the shot. This made for several Alerts that I did not deserve and was very irritating. Second, I finally figured out the Cube's odd button scheme for the game, but I did die a few times for that pleasure. And yes, the first person mode did make some of the bosses easier, but on the same token, I found a few of them to be a bit harder than the orignal. Psycho Mantis in particular was quite difficult at first, as I did not realize switching the controller once wasn't enough: I had to keep doing it. He was also harder to hit and his attacks were better. Also, the fight with the Abrams tank was harder in my opinion, because it seemed like the gunners were better shots, and you had to be much more precise with your aiming of the grenades to score a good hit. If it was only a glancer, it would take a dozen grenades to do the job. Ocelot was a pushover, I nailed him in about ten seconds, and first-person mode was responsible. I found both Sniper Wolf battles to be no different, nor was the second Raven fight. I think they neutered Metal Gear Ray, because while the gameplay was no different, he just seemed less willing to fire shots at me. I beat it with and without the Radome without even getting a scratch.
And finally, I touched on it once but it's important: I was disappointed with how the game itself was so unchanged. Maybe it was to be faithful, maybe not. But the game threw very few surprises at me, and that was a shame. Unfortunately, I could not play through Resident Evil ReMake because I could never tackle the terrible controls, but I did see it be played through and there was a lot changed and added, to confuse and distract the veteran who thought he knew it all. I was hoping there would be some of that in Twin Snakes, and that there was very little was a huge letdown (though I gotta say, I was prone to forgetting that the trap doors stay open after being tripped, I lost three lives that way).
Overall, I'd have to rate it an 9 out of 10, because while there were some disappointments, it is still one of my all-time favorite games with a bucket of next-generation improvements. And I have yet to tackle the real hard modes yet. :)
Okay, spoilers over.
YOU CANNOT HIDE FOREVER
WE STAND AT THE DOOR
WE STAND AT THE DOOR