[Alastor]

Well then your opinion simply differs from mine as I didn't let the "boss"-thing bother me, because the bosses from MGS3 were more or less the same thing (the Cobra Unit). It felt you found out more about them in MGS4, and any backstory to me is fine. I found their stories interesting, actually.

As for the great personalities thing, I didn't catch that much from the bosses of MGS2. In my opinion Fortune was as shallow as any other boss, and Fatman and Vamp even more so (before MGS4, I didn't understand Vamp at all, and his supernatural-thing bothered me in a way Psycho Mantis didn't). Also, MGS2 had looong boring codec calls (Raiden and his girlfriend) which I couldn't stand because Raiden was moaning about things all the time... during his mission. Outside the mission, fine. During the mission? No. For what it's worth, MGS2 to me is only fun during the Tanker episode. The bosses from MGS1 are quite awesome, agreed.

But I don't play Metal Gear Solid just for the boss fights. It was perfectly fine with me that the bosses weren't all that great, because that allowed the focus to stay on the things I found more important and interesting: Snake's dilemma, the relationships between the various main characters, Otacon, Naomi, Meryl, Ocelot, etc. And as I mentioned before, characterization was the best so far with this game, and how the story evolved was also awesome. Unlike MGS2 which felt like it ripped off MGS1.

One more thing. Metal Gear Solid is a game. Shorter cutscenes for me was fine, because I actually REALLY enjoyed playing the game this time. I suppose you and I just feel different, and that's fine, but I'm just pointing out that maybe you're looking at just the bad spots of the game, and that you should try to see the whole picture, and try to remember why you're actually playing the game.


PS: Half-naked Meryl, girls in lingerie posters, "make love to me, Snake!", a naked Raiden... that isn't perverted then? I don't know about you, but the fact that the bosses just tried to hug you doesn't seem perverted to me. But the way that they approached and tried to harm you was scary in my opinion, because it's quite different from the erratic, violent method they used earlier.