Great article Shaun! I'm a huge fan of the series to. I hope for the next game they get back to the basics of focusing on the gameplay that made the series what it is in the first place. Stealth based infiltration. MGS4 really let me down for a number of reasons but its departure from these basics was the biggest dissapointment.
Having said this, the first half of the game actually worked but in a different way to previous games. It managed to pull off somthing I thought not possible. It was more action orientated, but it also contained stealth. The fact that there was a war raging and snake could choose to join in in the fighting or sneak by, using the action as cover was a master stroke.
This whole game mechanic completely fell apart when snake went to europe where much more constrictive gameplay and almost never ending cutscenes took over. It seemed to me like the game play was beginning to suffer under the massive weight that of the storyline and all the lose ends that needed to be tied up by the end of game. It may have been a better idea to spread the story over two games to fix this.
Overall MGS3 is my personal favorite and another game like this would be a dream come true for me.
Dragons dogma has been the best game of the year so far for me. It will probably be beaten by Borderlands though. Its got bags of potential for improvement in any sequels that would definitely benefit from the bigger budget they would get.
Everything he said is bang on the mark. If only the whole industry had this approach to game development... And Just Cause 1 and 2 are great games that if anything are underrated.
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