I took a break for a couple of weeks and then came back to this a few days ago. Figured I’d make the most of what is typically my laziest holiday of the year ( I generally think of it as a fortnight of Sundays) to get it done.
I think this is up there as one of my GOATs. Which genuinely surprises me. It’s not right at the top but it’s nearly there. The story was very good imo, but I’m sure many will consider it nonsense.
The gameplay was just brilliant, and the meta was really a very clever puzzle based on setting up infrastructure properly. My favourite part of the game was setting up ziplines and connecting them with other player’s ones to create a rapid transit network across the highest and deadliest of mountains. Mountains that took hours to cross on foot and were really the first place to cause my death on a regular basis, but once tamed with ziplines it was huge amounts of fun flying over the summits on my personal rollercoaster.
All told, it took me approx 113 hours to get it done. And for 99% of that time, Kojima avoided his worst instincts and kept the story going at a clip whilst respecting my time. No self indulgent cutscenes. At least not excessive.
Until the end.
When he gave in and nearly ruined it with a series of storytelling choices that felt not unlike a rock guitarist playing a tedious half hour solo, not knowing how to stop.
Except that this was much, much longer. I won’t spoil it because the story is actually very good all the way to the end.
But there are three points where you might believe the game has ended. Obviously only one is true. From the first point where you get told you’ve won the game you could easily have another 6 hours to go.
There’s a credits screen that took about 30 minutes because it alternated making you run nowhere with credits, and actual “cutscenes” / exposition with no credits.
2 hours later after 90 minutes of cutscenes and about 30 minutes of gameplay interspersed through it I got to the 2nd feckin credits which contained the exact same content as the first lot. Why the first lot was there, other than to piss me off, I have no idea.
So in short. I still loved it. I love the world, the game, the connectivity, the music (mostly), even the story. I think he actually achieved what he set out to do, and I think it’s very hard to put into words. Which is why it has these conflicting reviews where it got perfect 10s but the words didn’t match up.
I still hope folks play it because it’s a totally unique game that does brand new things with gaming as a medium.
I’m not putting spoilers above this because I think you need to go in with the knowledge that, for the most part, it kind of respects your time, but if you think you’re getting to the end and it’s late; know that you should stop, and save the final session for a weekend when you have nothing else to do, because that one bit of the story is so arrogant in the /manner/ of it’s telling - not the content - that it’s breathtaking.
