Considering I was ranked 24th player out of a few million regarding the ranking in Sons of Liberty, you'll be the one doing the ass talking.
I'm sure the story may have "potential", but like the man says, the game makes it trivial. When the story is trivial, it holds no interest for me, nor should it to anyone who values their mind.
A lot of games offer good shooting. This one is just simply the newest and prettiest one.
But nothing more.
1st - the MGS games have really hokey in game animations. This is a fact. Deal with it.
2nd - the story is trivialized because the gameplay stands so well on its own.
3rd - MGS has the most contrived storytelling of any game, and while the cinematics are great, the actual plot sucks.
and halo was any better?.. i mean, i /liked/ halo, but it had its own issues, MGS series, particularly one and three, had a nice epic feeling to it, Hideo Kojima has a flair for cinematics.
MGS2 had serious gameplay issues, both were, the gameplay/cinematic ratio, too much of the latter, and another was, well... raiden.
as for MGS3's plot, i think it was leaning towards playing off at 60's spy thrillers, and james bond, it was set in the cold war for pete's sake!
hell, i can tell you that Ghost Recon, as purdy and graphically sweet as it is, its story was pretty much what i'd expect out of hollywood these days..
the Release title, Perfect Dark zero, failed to live up to the gameplay of its predaccessor, actually, it looked more like a tech demo than a game when one first lays hands on it, and plays.
the only current 360 game i enjoyed was "condemned" it had a CSI/FEAR element to it.. horribly short, however, but smacking people about with a pipe makes up for it.
quoting certain french people in a certain old BBC Comedy, "listen to me carefully, i shall say this only once"..
Deepblue, you take games
waaaaaayyyy too seriously, they're only games for pete's sake.
the fact is, all first generation console games suck.. the real cream of the PS3's crop won't come until the 2nd or 3rd generation of games for it. same with the 360, we're only just starting to see the opening shots of the 2nd generation of games, gears of war is only one such thing..
as for going up flush against the wall, rent/buy splinter cell sometime, it's been done before.