So this senior with a silver mustache and matching mullet walks into a bar. Or actually it's like a 747 with a bar. Or come to think of it, maybe you'd just call it a kitchenette with wings? Who knows (Martha Stewart?) but it looks pretty posh for mile-high food prep, sort of like the inside of the flying condo-in-the-sky the philanthropist in the Carl Sagan SETI flick uses to impress Jodi Foster (hey, it worked, didn't it?). Posh, and apparently impregnable, too. How else do you defend a game where a bunch of guys involve a six-year-old kid on a top secret sortie into treacherous territory?
Part of Metal Gear Solid 4's charm: It knows precisely when it's being ridiculous, and it makes sure you know it knows. The opening eight-minute install, annoying only because installs are still atypical in console-dom, ends with Snake cracking something wisenheimer like "Made you wait, did I?" The G.I. joshing -- that's G.I. as in gastrointestinal -- is back and explosively gross. I mean literally. And at one point during a mission briefing on our hero's aerial Taj Mahal, Snake turns down a plate of burnt eggs cooked sunny side up by a kid named...wait for it...Sunny! (Yuk-yuk, Mr. Kojima!)
Even during those breezier moments, the game never entirely relinquishes its sense of seriousness. Snake chain smokes like it's going out of style (which it has) during the install and according to my wife, he looks like hell (except the adjective she used was harsher). When Montezuma's Revenge grabs hold of one of Snake's battlefield companions in the middle of a major skirmish with frog-men that stick to walls, it's really because the guy's scared out of his wits. And the sequences with Sunny, the daughter of a woman killed by one of Snake's genetic "siblings" in Metal Gear Solid 2, reveal a skittish, oversensitive child desperately seeking approval from an embittered adult incapable of offering it to anyone, most of all himself.
Terrible things have happened to Old Snake, aka Solid Snake, aka Iroquois Pliskin, aka "David." Terrible things have happened because of him. The original Metal Gear Solid conveyed that at the B-movie level of the 1981 film that inspired it (Escape From New York), while the second game in the series upped the tenor and political subtext to something nearer Phillip Noyce's somber action flick, Patriot Games.
But MGS4 feels like a completely different game, thanks to Kojima raising his own cinematic bar and (so far, anyway) deftly vaulting right over it. Think epic and heartbreaking and creepy, like Sergio Leone's The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly meets Coppola's Apocalypse Now by way of Michael Crichton. The beautiful, terrible scene that loops behind the startup menu alone is stomach-dropping. (What's he doing? Why's he kneeling down? What's he doing with that?)
That won't reassure half-hearted fans who play these games for their sneak sequences, yet who reach for the "skip" button any time a cutscene plays and actors wax philosophical. Fortunately MGS4 mitigates even that complaint by working in a highly sophisticated cutscene engine that feeds you information like a series of portal-ized internet webcams threaded with informational feeds and you-choose multi-angle viewing controls. Sure, you can skip the cutscenes outright, but if you want the whole story and feel your fingers getting fidgety, having the option to watch what other people are doing in other areas of the plane during mission briefings or tally up all your accomplishments courtesy a scrolling ticker almost makes up for the gameplay interruptions.
My save file claims I've spent about eight hours prowling around the city in the first act alone. You can probably sprint through it in two or three with cutscenes, but you'll miss most of what makes MGS4's expanded tactical sandbox logistics worth tinkering with.
Take the OctoCamo camouflage, which lets Snake's suit blend with any adjacent texture. It adds just enough nuance to sneaking around soldier-clogged battlefields to keep tactical planning interesting and varied. Since it rates your "camo" coverage on a percentile scale that occasionally goes negative, you have to think in terms of gradients of coverage as opposed to other stealth games' far more binary "in" or "out of." Splinter Cell has gradients of light and darkness as well as sound, but MGS4 forces you to relate yourself to every opposable surface, and then relate that back to every nearby threat (shown as smaller or larger "bumps" on a silvery ring that shrinks or expands around you). The game doesn't say precisely how far away from an enemy or how much coverage is sufficient: you have to figure that out on your own.
You'll also have to plan around both static and dynamic tactical situations. In some areas, you'll move past a point and trigger a behavior, e.g. soldiers running down an alley or preparing to charge a sniper's nest. In others, the AI appears to follow loop routines but with enough variance that you'd have to sit for an uncomfortably long time to see the entire sequence. And the reactive enemy AI is considerably more aggressive and thorough than in any of the last few MGS games, pausing to pull open dumpsters and locker doors, climb ladders, and generally probe out-of-sorts evidence all the way to termination points.
Okay, time to sign this one off. I have notes enough already to fill a dozen more posts, but it's Friday night, I have a game to play. And so, I suspect, do you.
One last thing: Care to see the softer side of MGS4? Check out this week's Casual Friday, where PC World's Darren Gladstone plays Connect Four with Metal Gear Solid 4, The Incredible Hulk, Spore, and Wolf of the Battlefield: Commando 3.
I didn't finish reading your article. I stopped after the first SPOILER. Thanks.
Spoiler? Where?
I mean, yeah, I did actually reveal there's this game that came out and it's called Metal Gear Solid 4. Oops. ;)
In all seriousness, SPOILER really rises to the level of specific plot details, not vaguely plot-related references. Unless you're like a friend of mine who literally puts his hands over his ears, closes his eyes, and chants la-la-la-la at the end of an episode of Lost when they preview the next episode.
Come on man, don't act like a child, you did spoil Snake's real name. It's not something trivial like you make it out to be, you have to play up to act three to get it, but you, like a dumb ass, give it out and then act like a prick and say it's no biggie.
Instead of making amends by apologizing and deleting the spoiler, you mock the poster, man you're a jackass.
PS: I registered just to post this.
Well benhur, I guess you're new to the series, because the fact that his name is David is ancient spoiler-free history, as in MGS-1998-ancient. One of the last things he tells Otacon before they ride off into the sunset together.
(Incidentally, didn't know that about act three, I'm still at the beginning of act two.)
Oops! And welcome aboard! :)
Not new to it at all, I'm posting the comment based on what the original poster said, its obvious that he considers "David" a spoiler and that since he didn't know this he'd have to play more than half the game to find out. By the way, I already beat the game and yes, David is the least of your worries when it comes to spoilers. The game, especially Act 5 and the end are full of huge jaw dropping revelations.
PS: You need to take a look at the comment box, you have to sign in and out then in again like 5 times just to be able to submit your comment, really sad considering this is a PC site.
I completed this game in the first day it came out, in about 16 hours. I even went toi work in that time. So yea, kinda proud there.
But anyways, the "David" bit isn't a spoiler. So to steal your terminology, "don't be a prick and say its no biggie"
I love this game, throughly do. Its an amazing peice of work, and one Hell of an end to possibly the greatest gaming series in history.
Well I guess that makes most video games pretty unrealistic and silly according to you.
Specially Halo3 with that guy always in that suit even thou everyone else doesn't need one, oh wait, it's cool for some games not to be realistic except when is a ps3 exclusive, because THEN people have to complain about the silliest things I've ever heard.
Just so you know Matt there is a reviewer already who points out silly things, but he happens to be funny about not bitter, his name is Yahtzee and he actually does a good job, and does it to every game not just only ps3 games, you should let him do it from now on.
Sadly you happened to forget the experience this game gives unlike anything else that is out there, and imo this is the best game I've ever played and i have been gaming since 1987. And that says a lot about a game.
I think that after your thoughts on this "video game" you are OFFICIALLY TOO OLD to play them.
Ps3 is reaching 14 mil install base is time to let it go bro.
Well I guess that makes most video games pretty unrealistic and silly according to you.
Specially Halo3 with that guy always in that suit even thou everyone else doesn't need one, oh wait, it's cool for some games not to be realistic except when is a ps3 exclusive, because THEN people have to complain about the silliest things I've ever heard.
Just so you know Matt there is a reviewer already who points out silly things, but he happens to be funny about not bitter, his name is Yahtzee and he actually does a good job, and does it to every game not just only ps3 games, you should let him do it from now on.
Sadly you happened to forget the experience this game gives unlike anything else that is out there, and imo this is the best game I've ever played and i have been gaming since 1987. And that says a lot about a game.
I think that after your thoughts on this "video game" you are OFFICIALLY TOO OLD to play them.
Ps3 is reaching 14 mil install base is time to let it go bro.
Well I guess that makes most video games pretty unrealistic and silly according to you.
Specially Halo3 with that guy always in that suit even thou everyone else doesn't need one, oh wait, it's cool for some games not to be realistic except when is a ps3 exclusive, because THEN people have to complain about the silliest things I've ever heard.
Just so you know Matt there is a reviewer already who points out silly things, but he happens to be funny about not bitter, his name is Yahtzee and he actually does a good job, and does it to every game not just only ps3 games, you should let him do it from now on.
Sadly you happened to forget the experience this game gives unlike anything else that is out there, and imo this is the best game I've ever played and i have been gaming since 1987. And that says a lot about a game.
I think that after your thoughts on this "video game" you are OFFICIALLY TOO OLD to play them.
Ps3 is reaching 14 mil install base is time to let it go bro.
Matt. Good review man. I have played EVERY Metal Gear game there is (starting with the NES version). I deffinitly plan on getting this one regardless of what you wrote about it but, I like to see what other people think about the games I play.
Don't worry about stonefree, he obviously doesn't play video games nearly as much as you and I, and he probably won't be back anyways so there's no need to appologize to him. benhur is a loser and a hater and should probably stay out of convo's when he doesn't know what he's talking about since stonefree didn't specify what the "spoiler" he's talking about was, he just took a guess. Hell, I could claim that the fact he's got a plane is a spoiler but that'd be stretching it a bit.
And FrankFourFingers.... well I guess he just doesn't get it. Too Old To Play? My grandma would frag you at Halo. Go to a Xbox site fanboy.
And yes, I too made an account to post this. And I didn't have to triple post to get my point across.
Matt dont listen to these douches. they are all just immature 12 year old equivalents. you call this article a spoiler??? ITS A REVIEW! if you DONT want spoilers, DONT read the reviews! grow up people and stop acting like matt owes you something for you being a fanboy to the hardest of core. take it to some place like PS3.com and spout this non-sense where people actually care about it.
as for the MGS4 as a game? it sucks, i got it the day after it came out and after playing the first couple levels i can honestly say there is TOO much cutscene and WAY TOO little gameplay. the game is way too easy (even on maximum difficulty) the rediculous humor is not even funny and shouldnt be in a game that is supposed to be about multi-government espionage... nothing pisses me off more than knowing that the arms dealer has a fucking monkey that drinks soda! what a total waste of my money... i will never buy another PS3 game as long as i live....
Unless you're like a friend of mine who literally puts his hands over his ears, closes his eyes, and chants la-la-la-la at the end of an episode of Lost when they preview the next episode.
are you sure it wasent the la-lae lu la low?
this was worth the wait the ending was excellent.
now did anyone else hate the control scheme? I only wish they would have put a clasic control setting.
well any way it was all worth shadow moses though. (spoiler?)
well any save your game in a difrent block when you go.(special cut scene)
any way all the loose ends get wrapped up , and it was really nice the way it worked out.
and the whole david thing is NOT a spoiler, vamp being the zero is though,
just kidding (or maybe Im not)