An Absolutely Solid Finish
Metal Gear Solid 4 is here. You should buy it. Now.
Published: June 22, 2008
It's hard to overstate the gravity of Metal Gear Solid 4's release. It's arguably the biggest game of the year (yes, bigger than Grand Theft Auto IV even), and easily the biggest one for the PlayStation 3. In fact, it's the game that most were waiting the pull the trigger on, going by the anecdotal evidence I've seen here in the Bay Area. The title is a juggernaut, the kind of experience that by all measures should crumbled under the weight of its own hype.
Except it doesn't.
In fact, MGS4 somehow seems to be a better game for all the attention shone on it. It's such a pure fanservice offering, such a loving tribute and such an earnest attempt to tie up all the random plot threads while giving gamers the next true evolution of the series that it's amazing the game didn't simply implode from all the aspirations it has. Instead, throughout the 20 or so hours it'll likely take most gamers to blaze through things, experimenting and easter egg hunting through the whole mess, one thing is made abundantly clear: Hideo Kojima really, really wanted to make a movie. And for good or ill, he pretty much accomplished this handily.
It's an area that will likely spawn hours of back-and-forth arguments between both MGS die-hard and naysayer alike -- to say nothing of the scores of people that fall in between. MGS4 is by no means a perfect game. The plot points that have been retold and the many, many questions Kojma's "okay, seriously, this is really my last game" practices after every release have wrought turned the series into an almost impossibly tangled mess that, miraculously, manages to end up rather organized by game's end. It doesn't mean there isn't ample room to debate things, but it's done up neatly enough that most will feel satisfied.
So there's that side of things; the imperfect but serviceable job done in bringing Solid Snake's tale to a close. The other side of things is the actual game itself, and as any fan of the series will tell you, Metal Gear Solid's gameplay is one of the biggest reasons to love the game. The insane stories and characters make it entertaining, but it still comes down to sneaking around until the inevitable explosive endings to the games into overdrive. MGS4 does this in such a masterful way that it's entirely possible that no game will be able to match it for years to come. Yes, the action sequences in this game are that good.
They're also largely non-interactive, which is where the delicate see-saw of cutscenes to gameplay ends up becoming a little lopsided. I'm not saying the game isn't insanely good when it comes time to actually guide Snake around, but I am saying that as the game progresses, those instances become fewer and fewer, spread out more and more by the exposition necessary to tie things up in that semi-neat package I talked about earlier.
This inevitably ends up distilling the core experience down into something far more simple and direct. At the start of Snake's adventure and well into the first two acts of the game, the options seem almost limitless -- and indeed they are for a striking number of play styles. For the first time, you can actually run-and-gun a Metal Gear Solid game and it actually rewards you for it, offering more offensive weapons through Drebin, the enigmatic gun launderer serves as the access-at-any-time store in the pause menu.
Except it doesn't.
In fact, MGS4 somehow seems to be a better game for all the attention shone on it. It's such a pure fanservice offering, such a loving tribute and such an earnest attempt to tie up all the random plot threads while giving gamers the next true evolution of the series that it's amazing the game didn't simply implode from all the aspirations it has. Instead, throughout the 20 or so hours it'll likely take most gamers to blaze through things, experimenting and easter egg hunting through the whole mess, one thing is made abundantly clear: Hideo Kojima really, really wanted to make a movie. And for good or ill, he pretty much accomplished this handily.
It's an area that will likely spawn hours of back-and-forth arguments between both MGS die-hard and naysayer alike -- to say nothing of the scores of people that fall in between. MGS4 is by no means a perfect game. The plot points that have been retold and the many, many questions Kojma's "okay, seriously, this is really my last game" practices after every release have wrought turned the series into an almost impossibly tangled mess that, miraculously, manages to end up rather organized by game's end. It doesn't mean there isn't ample room to debate things, but it's done up neatly enough that most will feel satisfied.
So there's that side of things; the imperfect but serviceable job done in bringing Solid Snake's tale to a close. The other side of things is the actual game itself, and as any fan of the series will tell you, Metal Gear Solid's gameplay is one of the biggest reasons to love the game. The insane stories and characters make it entertaining, but it still comes down to sneaking around until the inevitable explosive endings to the games into overdrive. MGS4 does this in such a masterful way that it's entirely possible that no game will be able to match it for years to come. Yes, the action sequences in this game are that good.
They're also largely non-interactive, which is where the delicate see-saw of cutscenes to gameplay ends up becoming a little lopsided. I'm not saying the game isn't insanely good when it comes time to actually guide Snake around, but I am saying that as the game progresses, those instances become fewer and fewer, spread out more and more by the exposition necessary to tie things up in that semi-neat package I talked about earlier.
This inevitably ends up distilling the core experience down into something far more simple and direct. At the start of Snake's adventure and well into the first two acts of the game, the options seem almost limitless -- and indeed they are for a striking number of play styles. For the first time, you can actually run-and-gun a Metal Gear Solid game and it actually rewards you for it, offering more offensive weapons through Drebin, the enigmatic gun launderer serves as the access-at-any-time store in the pause menu.
