In MGS you can't use normal weapons like the SOCOM to aim up and down, but you can still shoot as such thanks to the auto aim (if an enemy is standing above you and you are able to target him, you can shoot him). Some weapons you can (and must) aim in a FPP view, like the Sniper and Nikita. In fact when you shoot with the Nikita and you get to move the missile yourself, you may move it in the XYZ axis, which is very important in the part where you need to destroy the controls that are pumping gas into that one room. This technique can be used in many other places where traversing elevated terrain is a thing, such as cheesing the 2nd Sniper Wolf fight via shooting with the Nikita from a safe spot where she can't shoot you.
As for the rest of your post, I still don't get what you are striving for. You keep bringing up examples of 3D gameplay and then dismissing it as "oh it's not important, it doesn't count".. So what is it exactly that you you want? What is your example of 3D gameplay that metters? Shooting up and down has always been there and you admit it, but then it's not good enough? You can hold on to ledges in MGS2 and drop down, climb up. There are helicopters boss fights that fly and giant mecha that feel much more interesting as 3D objects than they would be as 2D objects. You keep saying that you think it's pointless and then you don't even bring up any examples of how you'd improve it. Your whole argument boils down that the game could be made as a 2D game and as such it's pointless to be 3D, ignoring the fact that you can make the exact same argument for very much nearly every other 3D game as well.
Let's go back to your previous post:
What did FPS add with the extra dimension that MGS didn't? What do 3D platformers do differently that you can't do in a 2D one? Instead of jumping on monsters while going left to right you can also now go up and down while jumping on the same monsters. Your argument doesn't make any sense and it applies to everything else as well if we just simplify it enough. You're just cherry picking.
Yeah i'm cherry picking. Who's entirely focused on a single line over my message for several posts now ?
I'm a good folk anyway so i'm gonna answer again, fuck me if you still do the ostrich after that.
Regarding platformers, how would you translate mario 64 levels in the 2D fashion of classic marios ? Right, you can't. These are 3D games.
Regarding the gameplay of MGS1/2/3, it's baffling that you'd think gameplay suffices to itself. Like, you put a gameplay feature in a game and it's magically worth something, or rather it's magically relevant. And yet you don't want to aknowledge the fact that a gameplay mechanic is nothing without a proper level design to support it in a series of games that is notorious in that regard : MGSIV has a solid gameplay in itself, really, you could do a shit ton of stuff to go through the levels, yet it was worth no shit since the level design was banal shit boring and didn't require anything more but crawling to the end of the corridor. Who the fuck uses the robot in this game, really ?
I totally forgot, i swear, that you could go first person with the nikita missile... i fucking wonder why ? Could it have to do with the fact that it not only isn't required at all for the ONLY use of the nikita in the whole game but although because the base view while controlling the missile is from the above, in a clear way to say "where do you want to go on the xy plane milord ?" ? I'm pretty sure 80% of the players never realized they could go first person with it, and probably never did so because it never hit them that the height could be of any importance, not that I'd reproach that to them.
Thank you however to remind me of the sniper sequences, isn't there a better way to point out how crappy any proper aiming in the game actually feels like. Everytime I reach that point where sniper wolf lurks in front of me, my hands are shaking and my ass is sweating "boy it's time for that awful awful moment again". Yet ironically, Sniper Wolf never leaves the xz plane
The copter fight in MGS, whether you realized it or not, happens on the same good ol' xy plane. The chopper sometimes go over you but only to go to its next position, which is conveniently placed on a side of the building so you can still hide behind some random shit, like from any grounded foe really.
The fact you consider that the auto-aim targeting up and down automatically proves that it's impossible to translate it in 2D is rather laughable, so thank you for that.
There's 3D as 3D modelization and there's 3D as 3D movement, aiming, vizualizing the level and shit - in a word 3D gameplay, the very reason these two things are different explain the existence,
especially on the ps1, of "2.5D" with shit like Crash, Tombi and the good old MGS.
"Crash isn't 2.5D you can go in any direction and jump !" is basically what you're saying right now.
MGS3 had the fight against The End, which was cool. I guess that this sniper at least actually moves around the level, and not just changes position on a shooting wall. I'll conceide this one.
