Metal Gear Solid 4: The Guns of the Patriots
We've waded through the original Metal Gears and then Metal Gear Solids 1-3. The side games and the non-canon games. We've watched and waited at marveled at the progression of technology making one of gaming's most revered franchises, more involving, more beautiful, and sadly more convoluted.
Metal Gear Solid 4 : The Guns of the Patriots is a whole lot of things, big and small, involving and superficial, beautiful and ugly. It is a game full of paradoxes. That is the best way for me to succinctly describe this game.
Amazingly, in my humble opinion, much of the gameplay lives up to the hype. Yes, the outlandish claims of this game being the best of the series could (arguably) be true.
That statement sets a high bar I know, but depending on what you took from this series to begin with, you'll either agree with me, or disagree with me.
This game opens up in the Middle East. With Solid Snake (now Old Snake) narrating how the world has changed in a remarkably short time. Olga's child Sunny has grown some and is now aboard the Nomad with Snake and Octacon serving as surrogate parents, and Raiden having rescued her, this creates a Three Men and a Baby situation of sorts.
The game uses this moment to display the graphical power of the PS3 which admittedly is stunning. Light reflecting off the guns, the dust in the wake of the truck flying around realistically, even the slight and slow movements of the soldiers do not feel awkward or rushed for the most part.
Character animations have always been the strong point of the MGS series. Even in the PlayStation days, there was a bit were you (as Snake) heavily relied upon a certain character's animation to recognize...them. Oh screw it. It was Meryl, you had to watch her butt to find her in that one bit. There were other ways to do it, but the game implied watching the soldiers' butts would light the way.
As previously implied, this games strong point is easily its graphical ability. For the most part the game provides a photorealistic experience. Background events and combat is at times frighteningly real. Some scenes do fall into the realm of surrealist drama, but the quality of the animation and character models still makes many scripted events seem entirely plausible, which is a testament to the art department's talent.
The audio is also amazingly well done. Very few games truly require a full sound system to get a great sense of the audio's high production value, (which is hopefully the only time I'll use that phrase while referring to this game, otherwise it will start to sound like a mantra.) but this one does. Easily. The sound of a clip being jammed back into the weapon, even (but hard to hear except when playing loudly I spose) the sound of a syringe being pushed into its target, the animals sighted and unsighted. This game takes what you'd expect from any high-end game and turns it into a hemophiliac baby and kicks it in the face, with a giant robot. Yes, that good.
But the amazing thing is, more and more reveals itself as you listen harder and harder. And if you aren't an audiophile, you'll still be impressed if you stop to pay attention to the sounds around you. Nearly everything in this game becomes important on high difficulties, and so the developers seemed to have endeavoured to take as much "OMFG the game is so cheap! There was no warning for that giant dog to show up and eat me!"-type situations out of the equation. Which for anyone trying to gain the Big Boss emblem will appreciate. A no kill, no alert, no heal run is hard enough without shit suddenly flying at you with no real notice. And that is how good the sound is people.
The gameplay, the meat and potatoes of the Metal Gear franchise. More important then even the crazy story which grows even crazier in this game then ever dreamed possible. (Re: Nanomachines) Is both old and new. CQC is introduced into the 'modern' era. Introduced into the series by the previous game, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. The CQC system however has been slightly modified since the PS3 is now more pressure sensitive then the PS2 was, so now depending on how you press the button, you get any number of actions. At first its a bit tricky, and I recommend creating an alternate save (if you want your first run through to have as little kills as possible that is, if you don't give a crap, go to town!) and practicing the amount of pressure needed to perform each action. Yes there is a briefing section where you can do that, however I prefer using the real environment to practice, as it shows you what works and what doesn't in whatever situation. On the job training. Though really there are only three main branches of action, they do still take a bit of getting used to if you are the type of gamer to just jam a button and expect that action done. (Not everyone is a gentle gaming type, I'm not for instance.)
The sneaking has generally not changed, though again pressure sensitivity might take some getting used to, for the most part any changes are now intuitive once you grasp the main concept, the harder you push the more drastic the action. In CQC if you press the button hard you are left with one major option, the victim's death. But you can change your mind before you inflict death of course. And crawling is as simple as pressing the X button firmly and you're laying down, a tap gets you kneeling or bent low, and another tap will get you standing again. See intuitive.
Now there is a threat ring, which is straight from another Kojima game, Zone of the Enders. Though this is based more on sound then radar as in the other game, but it works in the same way. Closer threats are a higher bump on the ring and all threats in the area are on the ring, even animals, which can create some false positives while sneaking around, making this game even more in depth.
The newest addition to the game being the psyche bar. Combat, sneaking closely to enemies, alert status, anything inherently stressful, all lower the psyche bar. Which is a direct level of Snake's mental state. It has similar effects to MGS3's stamina bar. In fact it is nearly a complete parallel. The only difference being the combat high, where Snake takes less damage and has better accuracy, but the risk is he could collapse after the high. So smoke your ass off to keep from falling apart is what we've learned.
So at the start I claimed the game was both awesome and crappy. Why?
Take a look at everything I wrote. All that rambling.
The game does in no way force you to notice any of those things. Is that humility? Maybe, is that poor game design? No. But the quality of your experience is significantly diminished if you end up not noticing some of those things, (definitely not all of them of course) just a few. But you don't really have too. You can breeze through the game on normal using the Solid Eye shooting and killing whatever you want yes. You won't notice how great the graphics really are. Or how useful the sound actually is. Just by listening you can pinpoint where soldiers are around the way and how many there are. But you don't HAVE to even come close to noticing that. There are no bits where sneaking becomes important. Which is great yes. And how does that detract from this game? It doesn't really. Which is why I mostly praised this game throughout this review. However for those who will play this game once and move on, you will not have savoured the game. By no means should people HAVE to be gaming connoisseurs, but a good paced play through the game will reveal these things. Which kinda sucks, because anyone playing on easy will definitely not have to even consider any of these things. And truthfully, that is why I stated that this game is full of paradoxes.
And by the way, the story constantly using nanomachines as its deus ex machina? Ridiculous. But otherwise a fun ride.
Metal Gear 4 was everything I had hoped it would be, and mostly more.
It generally felt like a satisfying end to a very memorable series.
And so I give it fairly high scores as shown below. It is not and I cannot state this any more firmly, the best game ever. But it is one of the best games I've played in the long time.
Graphics - 9/10 - Wonderful but with some flaws, like when you get too close to certain textures. Or Akiba's shit stained pants. But the Rat Patrol's squad animations were flawless.
Sound - 9/10 - Great sound, stunning for the most part, but some sounds were far too loud in certain sections, louder then they really would have been.
Controls - 8/10 - Generally tight controls, certain (spoiler filled!) sections had testy controls, but overall very good.
Fun Factor - 8/10 - Not really that different then previous games, except for the addition of a gajillion guns. This would have been a 7 had it not been for two of the very fun battles at the end.
Reviewers lean - 9/10 - I do love this game a whole lot. In fact as of this writing (September 17th) I'm on my 6th playthrough. Which says a lot considering I played the crap out of this game on the FIRST play. Something like 90 hrs logged in that one game.
Total - 8.6/10 - A very strong game. One of the best games of the year easily. A great play for the casual or hardcore gamer. Just don't expect to understand the story if you are familiar with real nanotech, but if Star Trek's techobabble sounds plausible to you, then this story will blow you away.
