Metal Gear Solid 4

The PS3 is a very unlucky console. Most of its best games appear on the 360 too, which has the advantage of a superior online service and achievements. So it’s about time that the PS3 does get an exclusive, a good reason to buy the console besides the excellent blu-ray and DVD playback.

Let’s hope the PS3 follows the same pattern as the PS2, as that too has a lack of quality exclusives until a special title arrived, a Metal Gear Solid title.

And so we come to Metal Gear Solid 4. The final instalment of the Solid Snake saga. Now I’m not one for Soldier games but MGS has always been different, offering a level of silliness that is always welcome. MGS4 is no different. I was sceptical of the open areas with much fewer hiding spaces that was originally announced but my fears were dumbfounded.

I will never doubt Kojima again, MGS4 is awesome. However the title does have some very noticeable flaws.

Mainly the cut scenes. 90 minutes cut scenes have been quoted by some, which is a bit of an exaggeration. There are some that come near 50 minutes, but they are more combinations of cut scenes rather than individual ones. All are pause-able and most have the option to save in-between them which eases the pain. There are also first person views and flashbacks that offer some very limited interactivity with the scenes, so it’s not entirely just watching.

Because the cut scenes are long the game seems long but really it isn’t. All cut scenes are skip-able, but you’ll find if you do that there isn’t much game left. Perhaps this is a good thing as the MGS games are usually intended to be played through multiple times. Like Dead Rising, replaying a short game multiple times works better than a long game.

Also why is it, in games, when you need to follow someone, that person moves so slowly that you’re practically brought to a halt for most of the sequence? Unfortunately one of those parts features in the middle of the game.

I started with the negative’s first as despite the very nice visuals, decent soundtrack and good voice acting you expect from a MGS title, all the best bits are spoilers. So it makes praising the game very hard. If I was to give it a score based on my first play through I’d probably rate it a strong 7, weak 8 out of ten.

I’m going to list the parts I really enjoyed now and the reasons why the game is so awesome, which are all spoilers, so you can stop reading now if you don’t want the game spoilt. Let me just say it is a quality title, a must own, but not one which will be topping your top ten of all time anytime soon.

# ! # ! # ~~~ WARNING! SPOILERS AHEAD ~~~ # ! # ! #

ACT 1 – The moment you get the drum was pretty funny. I like how you can check the inside of the drum as Snake, fearing the worst considering someone was trying to take a shit in it.

Also Drebin and the Monkey were awesome additions to the already impressive roster of characters. Some of the interactions between the monkey and the other characters were real highlights of the frequent visits throughout the game.

ACT 2 – Awesome Boss Battles have always been a staple of the Metal Gear Solid Series and 4 is no exception. In Act 2 you face your first BB (Beauty and the Beast) battle which is definitely one of the many highlights in the game. Laughing Octopus isn’t too hard to beat but the way she uses the environment to her advantage is inspired.

I really like how the BB’s were given both a demonic male voice and a delicate female voice emphasising the beauty being consumed by the beast. Good to see that the male voice is the same throughout the BB’s giving the Evil in the game a little unification. Also nice to see a return to the MGS bosses, Octopus, Raven, Wolf, Mantis and Liquid. The whole MGS repeating itself might be getting a little old for some people but this is explained at the end of the game (why the events in MGS seem to repeat).

ACT 3 – I hated this act personally but it started linking all the games together in a way that makes sense.

ACT 4 – My favourite act as it contained the best moments. It’s a return to shadow moses with the game frequently referring to the classic masterpiece. The codec conversation with Otacon as you enter the blast furnace made me laugh out loud with the whole disk swapping thing.

Then there’s the quick dream Snake has where you play the first little part of the original MGS in the old top down style. Good to see just how far the game has come over the last ten years.

Finally the battle between REX and RAY was a long time coming. Getting control of a Metal Gear and destroying the so called superior model was an absolute dream, and no doubt what every fan wanted.

ACT 5 – In this one you fight Screaming Mantis, which was the second best boss fight after the metal gear one. Purely because of the link to the Psycho Mantis fight in the first MGS. Changing the controller doesn’t work and I guarantee you will do that before you get told it doesn’t work.

Then after you beat the BB you have a cool scene with Psycho Mantis who tries to do the things he did in the first game. It’s as if the PS3 was made for MGS4, as opposed to the other way around, as he can’t “read your mind” as there’s no memory cards and he can’t move your pad because of the lack of Rumble.

Work, and why life sucks.

Sorry I haven’t posted in a while. With me working and obsessively playing videogames I haven’t had change to do anything like draw, write, or update the site. It’s a lot of hard work to make a site your own, even when you use a place like Blogger and takes a lot of commitment.

Twinseeds is another example of a well intentioned site that I ended up abandoning due to the amount of work involved. I absolutely loved doing it but it was too much for one man alone.

This site is a lot easier to update I just need to find time. With the way things are going I maybe getting more time than I want.

You see I’m losing the “Job” I’ve been doing brilliantly for the last two years in September. Sad fact is the organisation needs to downsize and the be “open and fair” everyone had to be interviewed.

I’ve used quotations for those words as it’s not really a “Job” it’s a contract. I do the work on a temporary contract and they just don’t extend the contract when they need to get rid of me. Means no Redundancy pay, which sucks. “Open and Fair” means your hard work counts for nothing and maintaining you job comes down to an on the day interview. I joined as an agency worker, which meant no interview, As initially they needed a lot of staff. But to get a proper job with this organisation you need to have been in competition with the general public for it (Hence Open) with everyone having an equal change (Fair).

To me this is ridiculous, the best who were here should have been kept on. There must be some Jinx over me with interviews as I haven’t had a successful one yet. The first this year (to Keep this job) was strange. You see I gave good examples but I missed out because I took longer to answer their questions. Didn’t help that I knew more than they did about the job and was asked irrelevant questions.

But I digress, what is done is done. I didn’t intend to stay there long and it was only really a Job to me not a career. I’m 25, still live with my parents, single and basically heading nowhere. For a while now I have been pursuing a career in Maths Teaching. I looked at what I’d be good at, I have strong maths skills (that need practice I admit, not done anything serious in ages) and I genuinely like helping people.

Seriously I think there’s something wrong we me that I like helping others so much.

So to me that seems like good enough reasons to pursue maths teaching.

Now this is going to sound really stupid but despite the shortages getting into teaching is very, very. very, very, unbelievably difficult to get started in. The website is no help as it is all gobble-de-gook. After getting some advice from connexions I went for the GTTR route, slightly annoyed that it meant going back into full time education. I found that the bursaries however made this more appealing.

So I applied to my local university and here’s where I got knocked backwards. Getting in took a massive amount of work and was incredibly hard. Ok the University of Cumbria is quite well respected for teaching but it’s hardly Cambridge. Considering the shortages I thought this would be a breeze. WRONG! It’s no wonder there’s a shortage of maths teachers they aren’t exactly bending over backwards to recruit them. Financially maybe but that’s all.

So I underestimated them. And once again the Jinx of interviews keeps my perfect strikeout record continuing. Fair enough I didn’t do so well and know of some areas that I could definitely work on.

However I recently got hit sideways by the feedback (Yes one of the very few times I actually got something back). They said I need to think about my reasons for wanting to become a teacher! Great, now I’m questioning why I want to be a teacher and I feel lost and scared that I’m heading nowhere and back to square one.

I’m going to see about career’s advice, but it just seems like I’m still getting nowhere.

What this means however is I may have more time to make updates to everything. So I guess there’s a small silver lining.

So enough depressing talk. My Job may be nearing it’s completion but there are times where you have nothing to do (hence the ability to create this post). Normally in this time I play about with Excel to advance my knowledge.

Here are a couple of things I’ve done is Excel.

If you got the Heroes season 1 boxset you may be familiar with this Mind Reader. Some people who have tried this occasionally get hashes instead of letters in the grid. Try increasing your resolution though it may be down to your version of Excel. If anyone can confirm why it would do this I would be grateful.

Try and work out how it works. Try the maths on paper if you think I’m using formulae. If you can’t work it out it’s explained Here. This shows how it works, not only as an excel spreadsheet but in general (so it shows how the Heroes one works too)

And here is a little game I made up using random numbers and conditional formatting. I could probably do better if I used macros (at the moment the “mines” move about with every move)

I also made my own spreadsheet for recording my games collection, but it’s half finished.

All of these were made in resolution 1152 x 900, one up from the standard 1024 x 768. You made need to change the resolution to get the best results.

In case anyone was wondering

No I'm not dead and I haven't lost interest in this blog.

But just like my DeviantArt and My Fanfiction I have not found time to update it.

I did want to do a games of 2007 feature but again no time.

In fact this post will be short as I have no time again.

Work and Gaming get in the way.

Oh for the Record my top three games of 2007 were...

3. Mass Effect
2. BioShock

and in first place, the game people forget about because it came out so early that year (in Europe anyway), the Brilliant Okami

Eventually I'll get back to updating this site. I want to get rid of that Flash banner for a nice static one. Oh and now I have a Widescreen monitor I've noticed how messed up the alignment is.