Lament of Innocence had some things going for it in my opinion, but some serious flaws.

On the positive side, the combat was quite fun, and the special weapons were fun to use.

Negatives:
--The real-time item selection was a pain in the ass
--The camera sucked
--The levels were far too repetitive, and forced you to backtrack endlessly so as to make the game appear longer
--You could basically just run through every room without ever fighting the enemies
--It was a pain in the ass having to go back outside the castle to buy stuff from the merchant (forget his name)
--Not enough variety in weapons/ability to upgrade your weapons


It frustrates me because I've always loved Castlevania. By all rights, it should be one of the heavy hitters in the gaming world. I wish they could finally get their shit together and make a decent game. I don't particularly care whether it's 2D or 3D......I don't believe that's what will make the game rule or suck. They just need to stop half-assing it.

RobotGumshoe wrote:

Syd Lexia wrote: lordsathien wrote: I've got mixed feelings here. One on hand, Kojima's involved, but on the other hand, it's a 3D Castlevania. So on the one hand, it'll have 80 minute cut scenes and annoying stealth missions, on the other hand, it'll have terrible game play. Kojima is the second most overrated video game maker around, for the life of me I do not get the appeal of MGS. He's a reluctant video game maker, and earnestly desires to make films. He subscribes to his own superiority on this mark, and like most slaves of the old school of thought considers human interaction a bane of both story and true art and so he misses the fundamental nature of video games. Video Games are action and reaction to the environment presented, the strongest stimulus available by way of being founded in the reality of consequence. From what I understand the best parts of his games are the discovery of consequence for actions that normally are innocuous, like guards discovering your footprints in snow or the like. Its certainly not mechanics(which splinter cell did better) or story(which is a notorious clusterfuck). Excuse the diatribe.

You are certainly entitled to your opinion, and I don't blame you or other MGS-haters for feeling that way. The cut scenes are definitely long and frequent. It's not everyone's cup of tea.

That said, I don't understand why so many people have bashed MGS4 for these reasons (I haven't played it yet....hoping it comes out for Xbox360). If you've played the previous 3 games, you know what you're getting into. You've had enough evidence by now to know that there's going to be extensive cutscenes. If you don't like it, don't play it. It's not really a legitimate gripe in my eyes.

Bashing MGS4 for having cutscenes is like bashing Kevin Costner for making a bad movie.