I placed an online retail order that delivered only 03/09 and I kept wishing for those two days that my retail guy had the unofficial yet concerned audacity to open my copy and email me the steam code from within. That or valve allowed me to preload the darn 20.3gb download that konami didnt put in the physical copy. I still dont get why they didnt save that single disc too by giving the steam download link below the serial code. I finally played a 3-4 of hours yesterday at my home pc. Technically I may not be eligible to comment here as am travelling as of now so this is a blown weekend.
Also I played MGS2 on pc way back, but skipped that recent raiden game and also skipped ground zeroes. Just as I skipped witcher 2 yet witcher 3 was something I really really enjoyed.
As of now I have personally not felt the mesmerizing stuff dozens of online reviews are telling me about. Likely because its only the initial levels, but I wonder if anyone shares some of the observations below:
Controls:
A bit worried about lack of reports on this but I found it difficult to play on a keyboard and mouse. It starts from the menu itself, mouse clicks in menu are as if I had pressed enter. Whenever I paused for menu, the game kept asking me if I had to restart the checkpoint. I had a nice 3-4 attempts trying to save my graphics settings and wondering why they weren’t until I realized that my mouse click wasn't activating where I was aiming.
When snake regains control of his lower appendages, I realized that there is no separate key binding for crawl. You go prone by holding down the stance key which is also used to crouch. This is unlike 90% of daily play FPSes and will take time getting used to. By the way, the semi-paralysis wake-up movements were bit frustrating. Snake could only use few scripted furniture to help himself stand up. He crawled, super slow, along a hospital corridor while right above him was a handrail, all the time, within arms reach. This could not be interacted with to stand up. Hopefully it will be the only scripted linear level in the game.
Back to controls, despite the long tutorial episode, I wound up in Afghanistan without the knowledge of how to interact with an enemy whom I successfully sneaked up on undetected. I will state that also stands for unsuccessful attempts. Yet to figure out how to bring the options for interrogation, knocking out, etc like in the gameplay trailers. So some online research for me. I only realized this first hand and it was silly how the russian put his weapon down and stood while I guessed what and how to do next. In the end, I spent a tranquilizer round but then quit as I wasn’t happy with that. I could have knocked him out with the metal hand for free.
Also I hope there is a key for attaching snake to cover. Crouching behind obstacles isn’t as assuring gameplay as sticking to a cover in ME or SC:Blacklist. Like I said, back to research for a while.
The intro and cutscenes are solid, they are all very story, very serious and very crucial. They are very MGS. But often when the game snatched away the controls it was very abrupt and felt direction bending. Like being knifed from the back in battlefield 4, a control-losing punishing turn around surprise.
