Metal Gear Solid 4

Developer: Kojima Productions
Year of release: 2008
Platform: Playstation 3
Official website: http://www.konami.jp/mgs4/us/index.html

Metal Gear Solid 4 is one of those games that every hardcore gamer should play ... IF you have played the previous MGS games in the series. I myself have played the 1st (psx), 2nd and 3rd (PS2). I loved all of them. I have tried playing the NES versions, but I just couldn't get into it, it was too old for me. Since the 1st MGS on the PSX, I have been a big fan of the series. The game has everything that I like. A mature and deep story, Mecha, cool cutscene with great camera angles and superb voice acting and ofcourse exciting and thrilling gameplay. There aren't that many games out there that have all these good elements in them.

A lot of my collegues say that you should never buy a console just for one game. I share this opinion, but when MGS4 got released I was really thinking of buying a PS3. It was the price back then that made me think twice. Later on I did buy the PS3 in October '08 and MGS4 was one of the games that I bought on the same day as my PS3, together with PES 09, Dead Space and Armored Core For Answers.

Of the games that I bought I wanted to play MGS4 the most, but I just knew if I would play MGS4 after work, I would not have any night of sleep. So I just waited for the X-mas holiday, so that I could spend all day and night on MGS4. It toke me 3 sessions to finish the game on hard mode. Each session was more than 10 houres. I can remember that when I saved for the first time, I had played for 12 houres. There are just so many good things in the game, I just couldn't stop playing. It toke me 30 houres to finish the game. I got the eagle emblem. After that I was like, What now!? I want more MGS!

The biggest difference between MGS4 and the first 3 games is that you can play it as an action shooter instead of a stealth espionage game. You can play the game in different styles, you can run into the action and kill everything that moves in 3rd person or first person style or you can play it the original style, stealthy and sneaking. That is what I did, sneaking around waiting for an opportunity to sneak by or surprise an NPC and grab them from behind. The only thing that contradicts is that when you sneak alot, you'll might miss the beauty of the environment. While sneaking you stay low on the ground and close to walls, you avoid big open area's in which you might miss some of the good stuff.

The sneaking play style got me 30 houres of gameplay. When you do a more action shooting playstyle you can probably finish the game under 25 houres. Having the sneaking element in your gameplay is an easy way to extend the gameplay duration. While sneaking you will move slowely, stand still and hide for a few seconds or more, while as a player you still have as much fun and excitement when sneaking by an NPC.

Making the game an action shooter has defenitly appealed to a wider audiance. Action shooters are 'in' these days. By going in 1st person mode, you can really see how nice the graphics are.

MGS4 ties the first 3 games together and puts an end to the interesting and deep story of the saga. I have never seen another game that would cover so much of the story of previous games in the serie. All the characters that were in the previous games are introduced with flashbacks during the cutscene.
The story is so complex and detailed that they could easily make a movie trilogy or more out of it.



There are just so many good things with MGS4 I could go on for a while with all the remarkable events that are in this game. The game has many remarkable moments.

The good:

• Excellent and detailed story, I haven't seen a game before with so much story and tying previous games together to an ultimate climax.
• Amazing cutscenes, nice camera positions, always interesting and often epic. Some might say that they are too long and that games don't need cutscenes, I say be happy that they have put so much effort in making these cutscenes so well.
• Different play styles, you can play the game as an action shooter or sneaking and any style in between. There are just so many ways to pass by enemies, shoot them, sneak, use CQC to take them out or use your Mark 2, a remote controlled small robot to stun your enemies.
• Mini games and easter eggs, in the game there a lot of mini games, riding on the back of a bike, controlling Metal Gear Rex, riding the mark 2 around during mission briefings,and even a 1 vs 1 fighting mini game. Same goes for easter eggs, there often reference to other games, posters of stars, photo shoots with the beauty and beasts and even the playboy magazine is in the game.
  

The bad:
In my opinion there is nothing bad about MGS4 only some small improvements that would make the game even better.

• AI, the AI is good in most cases but it could be better when concerning the detection of shooting sounds. I could shoot somebody down as long as another NPC did not see the target being shot at, while you would expect that the other NPC would notice the shooting sound and go investigate.
• The controlls could be tweaked better. MGS4 uses every button on your controller and some people find it really hard to do the exact action at the right time. I have heared stories of people messing up because they pressed the wrong button. I did not have much problems with the controlls but more with the movement. Sometimes it felt chunky and 'old' a little more tweaking should fix that up.
• Some boss fights could be more 'next-gen', there were a few boss fights where I had the feeling that they were too 'normal' especially the fight with Raging raven and Vamp could have been more refreshing.
  

In overall MGS4 is an excellent game with great story, awesome cutscenes, different play styles and lots of mini games and easter eggs. It is all worked out so well, making the game unique with so many memberable moments. To me it is the best game of 2008.

9.5/10