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[2 Minutes Turkish]

Who says they aren't using compression? Chances are (as with most games), level data is packed into an enormous file and at least run-length encoded, possibly more. It is probably faster to decompress data on the fly than to load the full data off the disk. Perhaps you mean lossy compression. But again, who says they're not doing it already?

As for laziness, I don't think so. Kojima would snap his fingers and his programmers would do what they're told.

Perhaps it just didn't occur to anyone that mandatory installs are an increasingly hated facet of PS3 gaming. My own feeling is that if they can have a detailed render of Snake smoking a cigarette while the preinstall is happening, they could have cached data within the game. There is plenty of down time in the game - logos during startup, menus, cutscenes, lulls in the action where they could have spawned a background thread to be caching data. Perhaps it might have still have meant occasional progress bars if the caching was not completed, but I still think that is far preferable to forcing people to sit there for 10 minutes.

I've read many interviews with Kojima stating his disdain for compression, if he can avoid it, he does. Blu-ray has given him the oppportunity to avoid it as much as possible which is why he used up a DL BD.

Maybe laziness is the wrong word, but if you guys can give me a better one, please do so. All this bullshit about MGS4s scope and scale smells of fanboy faeces. All consoles have had games that use massive scale/lanscapes/scope what have you and yet don't force either multiple discs or use more space than is necessary.

I'm not trying to debate the quality of the game here. The game kicks ass, but I've played many 'huge' games over the years that didn't need 4 or 5 separate installs, PLUS tonnes of loading screens through the entire game.

So if you guys can think of a better word for lazy, please, feel free to word me up. And please, to the 'elistists' talking about how little I know, your one sentence responses of "You don't know what you're talking about", or "Your posts are gold", if you're going to try and appear so superior and clever in your ivory towers, make the effort next time to at least tell me why I know so little and I'm happy to stand corrected.

Hence why I actually responded to the quoted post.

 

[AKS]

The key thing to consider about the installs would be "Am I seeing a significant improvement? Am I seeing results for my time and storage space?" In MGS4, the answer is "YES!!! This looks FUCKING INCREDIBLE!!!" So, yes, installs are fine by me. If I give up a few gig of my HDD and the occasional 2 minute install and something like MGS4 is the result, bring on the installs. I wish I had the option to do one giant install to do it all at once, but I can only imagine the bitching and fanboy spin that would result from that (giant 20 minute install?!? Kotaku's wet dream of a Sony bashing story...). :lol

 

[2 Minutes Turkish]

The key thing to consider about the installs would be "Am I seeing a significant improvement? Am I seeing results for my time and storage space?" In MGS4, the answer is "YES!!! This looks FUCKING INCREDIBLE!!!" So, yes, installs are fine by me. If I give up a few gig of my HDD and the occasional 2 minute install and something like MGS4 is the result, bring on the installs. I wish I had the option to do one giant install to do it all at once, but I can only imagine the bitching and fanboy spin that would result from that (giant 20 minute install?!? Kotaku's wet dream of a Sony bashing story...). :lol

I think the reason MGS4 is getting the heat it's getting is because not only do you have a total of about 15 mins worth of installs, but you also have tonnes of loading screens and then hours of cut-scenes.

If someone bothered to actually time the amount of time they spent playing the ACTUAL game, i doubt it would be more than a few hours. While those few hours are fuck awesome, it's not enough.

 

[Fair Witness]

If someone bothered to actually time the amount of time they spent playing the ACTUAL game, i doubt it would be more than a few hours. While those few hours are fuck awesome, it's not enough.

But it is enough, because it's Metal Gear, and Metal Gear means excellent story and cutscenes. It would be like saying "If someone bothered to actually count the amount of time they spent reading the text in an RPG instead of playing the ACTUAL game, i doubt it would be more than a few hours." But "playing the actual game" in an RPG includes the story, and reading the story. Sure, some people may only consider the "actual game" one where you're not exploring but fighting, or not reading or watching cutscenes but instead exploring, etc. In the end the game is a complete package, like the parts you want, but you can't say the rest isn't part of the game.

 

[2 Minutes Turkish]

But it is enough, because it's Metal Gear, and Metal Gear means excellent story and cutscenes. It would be like saying "If someone bothered to actually count the amount of time they spent reading the text in an RPG instead of playing the ACTUAL game, i doubt it would be more than a few hours." But "playing the actual game" in an RPG includes the story, and reading the story. Sure, some people may only consider the "actual game" one where you're not exploring but fighting, or not reading or watching cutscenes but instead exploring, etc. In the end the game is a complete package, like the parts you want, but you can't say the rest isn't part of the game.

I understand what you're saying. But not all Metal Gear games have been that cut-scene heavy. 2 and 4 have been by far the worst.

1 and Twin Snakes (same game really) weren't that bad, and as much as I hated 3, it didn't have THAT many.

You can still tell a great story without hours of cut-scenes and codec calls. I don't think saying "But that's what Metal Gear is" get's it off the hook. Shitty controls didn't get GTAIV off the hook. Shit controls are shit controls. Too many movies, means too many movies, regardless of the game.

RPGs are a different beast. You read a lot of text, and you do a lot of grinding, but you are still actually playing the game. You are there, in-game, reading that text, much like you are in Zelda games. But you definitely play the game for more than 3-5 hours. When you're in a codec conversation, or watching a cut-scene, you're leaving gameplay to watch something else happen. I know it's technical, but it's still an issue.

Again, this isn't taking away from the quality of the gameplay. I'm saying I want MORE of it BECAUSE I love it so much. I've always been on the Metal Gear side of the whole Metal Gear vs Splinter Cell side, but at least Splinter Cell gives you more ACTUAL gamplay.

 

[Ploid 3.0]

I think the reason MGS4 is getting the heat it's getting is because not only do you have a total of about 15 mins worth of installs, but you also have tonnes of loading screens and then hours of cut-scenes.

If someone bothered to actually time the amount of time they spent playing the ACTUAL game, i doubt it would be more than a few hours. While those few hours are fuck awesome, it's not enough.

The first play throughs are usually to see the story for the first time. The second play throughs and beyond is when I start doing crazy things like taking on a gekko with a pistol and failing, while having fun. Not to mention the special bullets, songs with effects, and face camo that cause npcs to act a certain way. I would say easter egg codec calls but that was cut down a lot due to complaints most likely.

My pistol fight with a gekko. I had a ball. (spoiler)
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=11684871&postcount=499

 

[2 Minutes Turkish]

The first play throughs are usually to see the story for the first time. The second play throughs and beyond is when I start doing crazy things like taking on a gekko with a pistol and failing, while having fun. Not to mention the special bullets, songs with effects, and face camo that cause npcs to act a certain way. I would say easter egg codec calls but that was cut down a lot due to complaints most likely.

My pistol fight with a gekko. I had a ball. (spoiler)
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=11684871&postcount=499

That, I can understand. The experience is what you make it.

Some people will play Bioshock with one or two plasmids for the whole game. Then other will replay it using different combos of plasmids.

Don't get me wrong, I'm doing a similar thing to you. I'm on my second playthrough of Metal Gear, this trying a different strategy, and I'm actually getting more playtime out of it already. But now I'm skipping the cut-scenes and codec calls altogether, so I'm actually enjoying the game more too.

But I fear the game will feel a lot shorter because of this. It is hours of cut-scenes after all. But I can see your point. The experience is what you make it.

 

[Ploid 3.0]

That, I can understand. The experience is what you make it.

Some people will play Bioshock with one or two plasmids for the whole game. Then other will replay it using different combos of plasmids.

Don't get me wrong, I'm doing a similar thing to you. I'm on my second playthrough of Metal Gear, this trying a different strategy, and I'm actually getting more playtime out of it already. But now I'm skipping the cut-scenes and codec calls altogether, so I'm actually enjoying the game more too.

But I fear the game will feel a lot shorter because of this. It is hours of cut-scenes after all. But I can see your point. The experience is what you make it.

For me I don't think about how short it will be on my other play troughs. In fact I sometimes hope I'm done quicker so I can go on to unlock the other set of things on the next play through. For mgs3 I unlocked the camos that the bosses left behind after I kill them with none lethal methods. Then I did a stealth play through that took me a long long time actually heh. I can't imagine how long it will take me to do big boss hard to obtain the big boss emblem. Sure it has to be under 5 hours but I'll have to fail and see different approaches I can take each time. I'll probably make very good use of my tools such as MKII doing a lot of the dirty work and scouting since it has stealth camo that's not not a special item. I'm also enjoying MGO a lot thanks to the gaf presence and the fact that I liked socom a lot.

Some people said MGS3 was very short as a complaint. I thought it was a long game.

 

[MoxManiac]

The key thing to consider about the installs would be "Am I seeing a significant improvement? Am I seeing results for my time and storage space?" In MGS4, the answer is "YES!!! This looks FUCKING INCREDIBLE!!!" So, yes, installs are fine by me. If I give up a few gig of my HDD and the occasional 2 minute install and something like MGS4 is the result, bring on the installs. I wish I had the option to do one giant install to do it all at once, but I can only imagine the bitching and fanboy spin that would result from that (giant 20 minute install?!? Kotaku's wet dream of a Sony bashing story...). :lol

The installs are supposed to reduce loading. That's the purpose behind them. But the game still fucking loads like crazy even installed! So no, I am not seeing a significant improvement with installs compared to other games.

 

[Farnack]

it's not enough.

Yes it is.