Warning: The following blog post will feature negative comments towards Metal Gear Solid 4. This does not mean I hate the game. This blog is also spoiler city. Fair warning.

Love, Alex



I’ve been playing what’s considered to be the Playstation 3’s best game of 2007 (so far), and I couldn’t agree with that that sentiment any more. It is the best the machine has to offer, and don’t worry. I’m not going to spin this into something negative. I really did enjoy Metal Gear Solid.

I guess I can start by discussing the game’s graphics and how impressive the character models are. I’m also saddened to say that it was the only thing that really stoked my game boner when I saw the trailers for this game. The cut scenes looked great, but once you got into playing the actual game, the environments looked incredibly unimpressive. It was like looking at an early XBOX 360 game (insert “MGS4 on 360 comment here). Everything else in the game was impressively stunning and the game’s attention to detail made me notice the lackluster environments.

The visuals lead well into discussing how this game tells it’s story, and how I believe it detracts from the game-play. I’ll use an example to explain my point. Shawn Elliot (1Up/GFW) said that watching the cut scene with the Gekko and Raiden hyped him up for an interesting fight against them. What he got was a giant ass robot that could do a spin kick. What you saw in those cut scenes felt like something else and for the most part that something else was cooler than the actual game. The game-play just couldn’t compete with what was being watched, and I felt that I wanted to do what I was watching.

Some people use the Raiden fight to knock on the game down, and I have to agree with them. I’ve heard people say something like, “I’d rather have a nice cut scene over some gimmicky Ninja Gaiden mini game.” My response to that would be, why does it have to be gimmicky? I’m playing a video game, why can’t you make it work, Kojima? I did really enjoy the cut scene on my first play through to extent where I wasn’t really bothered I wasn’t playing as Raiden, but as I went for my second play, I wanted it.

A long with the cut scenes detracting from the game itself, I felt that I got too much information. This overwhelming amount of information was also presented to you in what I believe to be poor story telling. I’m watching these two guys sitting in a room go on and on about stuff that doesn’t really need to be explained. I know some of you may say that it brings you closer to Snake or the other characters, but do you think this would be accepted in a film (which this practically is). I don’t find it interesting and I’m not getting closer to Snake as he sits there smoking a cigarette, huffing and puffing while Ocelot goes on and on about nanomachines or Drebin not shutting the hell up about the war economy.



I can’t tell you guys how annoyed I was by the final cut scenes. The length of it was incredibly painful and I felt that half of it was unnecessary. Fatty foods are great, but if you eat too much grease you get sick. That last cut scene was me going to a buffet and getting sick.

I felt that the game worked really well when the cut scenes and the game-play came together. There were about 3 incredibly memorable scenes. The motorbike chase, Snake fighting off the kamikaze Gekko, and Snake in the microwave hallway. The last scene I mentioned has got to be one of my favorite moments in any video game.

I was surprised at how much I enjoyed going into Shadow Moses and for reasons that I would have never thought. If you don’t already know, Metal Gear Solid 4 is my first Metal Gear. I knew people that played, and I tried playing the original game as a kid, but I was still able to enjoy the little “nudge, nudge, remember this?” moments. I also watched the game trailers retrospective so I wouldn’t be too lost, but I thought those moments in the game were incredibly clever

The game-play itself was enjoyable. I had fun with the gun-play despite the fact that it’s a stealth shooter (is stealth shooter an oxymoron?). The funny thing was that I was pretty impressed by the amount of weapons for a game that’s meant to be about hiding and tranquilizing. I mean, there was an anti-tank missile launcher in it. I’m not complaining because the fact that I could choose from a large collection of weapons for every possible combat situation imaginable is awesome. It is unorthodox, though.



The enemy AI wasn’t impressive at all, and the infinite enemy respawning really took me out of it. It was fairly easy to take out your enemies if you were spotted (for the most part). It made me not want to go the stealth route even less because I felt it was pretty pointless during many parts of the game. I’d rather have my enemies be stupid rather than being unfair (I’m looking at you, Bad Company). The game did good in making sure the stealth portion of the game wasn’t broken, so that’s nice. If I wanted to go hiding around I could do it and it wasn’t unfair.

There was some other things that bugged me. The one level I absolutely hated was chasing Naomi around with the night vision goggles. I don’t know if I’m just stupid, but it was incredibly long, hard, and annoying. At one point I realized that I made footprints so I couldn’t tell who’s were who’s. It was a nightmare and I wanted out.

The PMC and rebel thing was kind of pointless as well. If you don’t help the rebels it just makes the game harder, so it’s really not even worth it to play the game without taking out the PMCs unless you really want a harder game.

With all this negativity out of the way, I’m going to repeat myself. I enjoyed the game. Snake takes Yojimbo’s spot by a long shot of coolest old dude ever. While I thought most of the cut scenes were long, I was still interested in seeing what was going on with these characters.

There’s something about the combat that makes me want to replay this game. I don’t think I’ll ever try to beat the game without killing anyone because that doesn’t sound like fun. Stealth, no killing, final destination! To this day I’ve replayed Metal Gear Solid 4 three times. Ultimately, the gamey-play is the most important part of any game. Every now and then I catch myself playing the game the way it’s “intended to be played.” Stealthy. It’s fun to pretend you’re s super secret spy.

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P.S. - I’m a fan of constructive criticism so please help me be a better writer. That way you don’t read shit and I don’t write shit. It’s a win-win situation!