Metal Gear Solid 1:
I know the one which was requested was 2 but since I have to play this one anyways it doesn't hurt to also write about it
First of all, the PC port for this game fucking sucks ass, the app barely runs, and don't you dare click outside the windows because the game will shit itself and either crash or do whatever.
There were moments on the game where i'm just grinding a boss and whatever, giving it multiple tries to understand how it works and shit and since I have two monitors I put just a youtube video or whatever on it, there isn't much going on in the mgs screen other than me learning timings and shit so no harm done, thing is, whenever I beat the boss and a cutscene starts playing, I went to pause the youtube video since I wanted to hear the cutscene, thing is, clicking back into the windows always will skip the cutscene, making me have to go back out of the game and actually google the cutscene to be able to watch it
not only that, but the control scheme for this game isn't the best given that this game was released in the 90's and making games that control good wasn't something they had figured out yet, and the psycho mantis boss fight doesn't hit as hard in pc. Game had a bunch of backtracking which isn't the most fun and honestly it drops the stealth element alltogether in the last quarter of the game. + I'm playing a digital version, I don't have a box of the game.
Asides from the technical problems or gameplay problems, the story is actually really fucking good, the actual concept of the story is pretty simple, you have to get in a secret base and stop something known as metal gear (not solid) from launching. You have a comunication device that you can use to talk to people on the outside, this works well both in gameplay as for the purpouses of the story and the actual developement process of the game
The codec (name of the device) can be used ingame to actually recieve hints and orientation in case you ever get stuck. In terms of story, as I said, it allows snake to actually talk to people and move the story forward, but most importantly, due to it being a radio device you can only hear what they see, not actually see the situation they're in. Most times you talk to someone in a videogame you are actively seeing them, even if they're not with the protagonist, they switch perspectives to show you, but here, the fact that it hides it enhaces the story since it allows for all the betrayals and intense situations to be a surprise to the player
This also helps with the games budget, since kojima now doesn't have to actually make all of those scenes, they can just tell you what is happening, which is a lot simpler than actually coding it and showing it in the game.
The actual story uses the entire metal gear situation to explore the human nature, it's a tense situation where everyone is lying and have ulterior motives (except otacon you're the best), and the bonds of friendship, love and family are put to the test, and I think how the characters develop, and what snake ends up thinking about each one of them is WAY more interesting than the "actual plot"
this game would be an easy A tier but since the gameplay fucking sucks i'm lowering it to B
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Rokujou Hitoma no Majo Life
SoL about witches with very little money and the need to actually get more money
this manga doesn't have much depth but it is cute so like that's everything that it really needs to do, + the food looks delicious so that's a bonus.
Like really, slice of life comedy is all about transmitting a certain energy to you, as some people who really like lain would like to say on the internet, it's all about the vibes and the aesthetics, and when something like lain does lean into that it's praised but with slice of life "nothing happens lmao", an I have to say, this is SoL racism and I wont stand for it
But yeah, slice of lifes on the internet are really misrepresented, and that is because the concept of a plot is very distorted. I'm actively reading through jojos (so far it's not something i'm really liking that much but it's popular here and I want to be able to hold a conversation about jojos with someone), just finished reading part 4, and I have to say, there is NOTHING that happens in part 4, they just punch each other for like the entire manga with no real point, however, a fight is considered to be an event. Shounens are all about giving adrenaline to the watcher and also forming a community surrounding it, and this is perceived completely fine, more often than not, the plot is just a way to get this to happen. SoL are just the same but replace combat with cuteness.
also, I know that i'm just supposed to turn my brain off and just be happy while reading this type of thing, however while reading I started really thinking about it for some reason, about the unemployment rates between witches and the reasons why they were starved of money, trying to make money only based on their magical abilities and seemingly having no type of studies or anything that would allow them to get a regular human job
TO finish this off, I noticed a really weird trend, and that is that every manga/anime about witches i've seen it's actually really good. This one, little witch academia, witch hat atelier, flying witch, all of them are pretty good so that's cool
anyways, placed in b tier
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next: metal gear solid 2
next: uzumaki
haven't started the anime because i'm watching some other animes first