Sorry to have been away so long (yes, I am apologizing to all four of you who have ever visited my blog), I’ve been feeling rather lazy lately, and MGS4 hit on Thursday. SPEAKING OF WHICH…

I’m going to get right down to it. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots is a great game. Not without flaws, but I enjoyed it more than I enjoyed Grand Theft Auto 4 (and that IS saying something). I’ll give you the quick and dirty version, since I don’t have the desire to write an overly long, drawn out version of what I have stated in the previous sentence.

Good:

  • MGS4 is one of the best looking games I have ever seen (if not THE BEST). Really jaw-dropping stuff.
  • MGS4 has extremely forgiving gameplay. I had not enjoyed playing a Metal Gear game other than the two Metal Gear Acids on the PSP until MGS4. This game gives the player the freedom to run and gun, while still retaining the overall look and feel of a Metal Gear Solid game. The folks at Kojima Studios really blew me away with how well they adapted this game to appeal to the western, shooter-centric audience.
  • This game has some truly amazing boss fights. I won’t spoil anything, but they really do some amazing things towards the end of the game (Acts 4 and 5 in particular).
  • The Drebin system makes the game a ton less frustrating, since you can buy weapons and ammo at any time during the game. There was one boss fight in particular which would have made me break my Dualshock 3 against a wall if I couldn’t have kept buying ammo during it.
  • The storyline made enough sense to where I didn’t have many questions at the end. This is coming from someone who has never played through MGS1, 2, or 3. Impressive indeed.

Bad:

  • There was one cutscene in particular that lasted WAY TOO DAMN LONG. Seriously, it almost ruined the ending for me to sit there and watch this part of the game, because I didn’t care to hear the same thing repeated OVER AND OVER for around half an hour. What made it more obnoxious was that it came at the end of probably another separate half hour of cutscenes. I paid for a game, Kojima, not a movie. I can’t complain about any of the other cutscenes though.
  • There were still parts of the game that I never really felt in control of, and was just glad to have lucked my way through them. I feel as though at certain times, even during gameplay, what you are doing as a player is cheapened in order to allow for a more cinematic experience, which isn’t cool.
  • This isn’t really a horrible thing for everyone, but the amount of fan-service in this game is really hard to take for someone who hasn’t liked a game in the proper series until now. They throw so many characters at you, and I started ignoring new characters at a point. I just wish that I had read more up on the back-story of the game, so certain events in the game would have had more of an impact on me.
  • For how amazing Blu-Ray technology is supposed to be for large games, it annoys me that the game required an initial install, an install for each act (5 acts total), and a ton of load times at some really critical points. I just wish Kojima’s team would have spent some time compressing this stuff so that more things could be done faster. Is that so much to ask for?
  • For how fantastic the game looks, there are some really strange low resolution objects in the game. For example, at one point in the game, you come across some really hideous looking bottles. They just look so horribly out of place that you wonder why they even bothered to put them there.
  • At times, the frame rate lags during cut-scenes. CUT-SCENES!

My complaints are really picky though, the game is amazing, and is a testament to current cutting-edge technology and the power of the PS3. It deserves to be a system seller. If you have a PS3, there is no reason to not grab this game, and even if you don’t have a PS3, you should consider buying one for MGS4. It really is that good.

I would also like to mention that I have not touched Metal Gear Online, the online multiplayer game packaged with MGS4, and since it still requires you to set up a Konami ID and some other junk in order to play it, I may never get around to it. Obviously though, MGS4 is more than good enough to warrant the $60 purchase, regardless of how good or bad its multiplayer component is.

Since I made a post recently about how stupid I feel scores for gaming reviews are, I’ll just compare the enjoyment factor of this game to some other games that I have played. My ranking for MGS4, at the moment, is:

Better than Gears of War, worse than Resident Evil 4.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is a high honor from yours truly, as Resident Evil 4 is my favorite game of all time. Until next time kids…see ya!