Well, one of the biggest gaming releases of this year recently came out… no I’m not talking about Grand Theft Auto IV, it’s Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots! This game is of course made out of the master mind of Hideo Kojima, and is available right now for the Playstation 3.
I got the game on midnight launch and played it after a quick 4 hour nap, non-stop until I finished it. With rumors and spoilers roaring all over the ‘net, I just wanted to beat the game so I could actually browse websites without the fear of being spoiled of the game’s ending.
I want to start by saying that this game was made for the fans. From start to finish, you aren’t just playing some video game or watching a movie (long cut-scenes FTW), you are part of an entire experience. I throw the word “experience” around a lot while talking about good games, but Metal Gear Solid 4 seriously gets you involved into its universe. This game was going to end a story that started all the way back in the NES days. The amount of hype that it had to live up to was unbelievable, I would go as far as to saying more so than GTAIV. The Metal Gear Solid fan-base is incredible. People have beaten the games countless times, read the novels, played the spin-offs, everything just to get ready for this game. I actually watched the Metal Gear retrospective the day before I got the game twice on GameTrailers. I highly recommend watching it.
Back to the game, I don’t know where to start. There are many ways you can review it. It can be reviewed as a game, an interactive movie, a movie, you get the point. The story… well I won’t talk about that here, that is what you play the game for!
Graphically, Metal Gear Solid 4 is simply awesome. Each area the game takes place in is unique and feels like you are really in it. When you are in a battlefield, it feels like you are in a battlefield. You see bombs go off, people flying around everywhere, it’s just incredible. The characters are some of the best looking models in this current generation of videogames. I would say you could put this game up there with a high-end CGI movie release and it would be just as good, if not better. The Metal Gear Solid series is known for using the real-time (in-game) graphics for the cut-scenes, so you never feel that transition as you do in other games when they start. Pictures or videos don’t do this game justice.
Sound also deserves a 10, A+, 100, whatever the websites are giving it. Battlefields sound even better than they look. I played this game with some pretty good stereo speakers *sad face* and there was just so much going on. The guns sound like they should, explosions, the whole package. You can hear birds chirping, water (!), fart sounds (!!), a guy emptying his bowels (!!!) all in glorious Dolby Digital as well. And while I haven’t heard it myself, I can only imagine how good it is. The Soundtrack (as you should know) is totally rad and epic. You can listen to classic Metal Gear and Metal Gear Solid tracks throughout the game by using the iPod that Snake carries with him. You can find tracks hidden in different parts of the game, which keeps you on the look out. There is also a podcast that you can download that is only available through MGS4, which is pretty interesting. It mostly talks about the game, the people behind it, what you would expect from a video game podcast.
The Presentation of the game goes beyond most movies, and offers something that you really have to see to believe. From the moment the menu loads to the installation screens (lung cancer FTW), it told me “JC… you are about to witness a real next-generation game” to which I replied “why am I talking to myself?”. The cut-scenes have a real “movie feel” to them with amazing camera work and great choreography. Honestly, you could buy this game for the cut-scenes alone and it would still be worth it. I’ve yet to mention anything negative, but honestly, I don’t know what negative things to put here… the game ends? There you go. There is one complain that I can think of (not a bad thing for everyone, but it’s something to mention), the fact that the cut-scenes are pretty long. The whole 90-minute cut-scene deal wasn’t a joke. If this game was to be turned into a movie, it would need 3 sequels, a prequel, a spin-off somewhere in there and afterwards an extended edition of all of them. The game took me around 20 hours to complete the first time around on Solid Normal difficulty. Out of the 20 hours, 6-7 hours were of actual gameplay, which isn’t bad considering that is the standard length of an entire game (including cut-scenes) nowadays.
Like I stated in the beginning, this game was made for the fans. The reason most people like the Metal Gear Solid franchise IS because of the epic cut-scenes and the things around them. The cut-scenes (how many times have I said the word “cut-scenes” now?) are the backbone of Metal Gear Solid.
Now that’s all good and all, but what about the meat and potatoes?
When Kojima-san said that you could play the game in different ways, he wasn’t kidding. To put him to the test, I played each Act of MGS4 differently from the one before. The end result? He was right! I tried to match the way I played with what was going on. War zone? I took out a P90, a sniper, some grenades and took the whole place down. Quiet and dark area? time for some sneaking around. I don’t think a single player game has ever that this much replay value, and I know that’s saying a lot. The fact that you can play in all of these different ways will keep you coming back to the game for months to come, not to mention the different difficulty levels, easter eggs and unlockables. The addition of an over-the-shoulder camera view and much improved first-person view adds a lot of variety to the table.
One complaint that past Metal Gear Solid games have had is how the controls seem to have been taken from the NES games, rather than actually try to reinvent them. Guns of the Patriots seems to have finally fixed that issue by doing things like letting you hit the triangle button to hug the wall instead of having to run into it for a few seconds. Some new features include being able to move around while crouching, offering a good balance of stealth and speed. The Kojima Productions team did an amazing job of adding new features and blending them so well into the game, that they just feel like they’ve been there all along. The only real complaint I can bring up involving gameplay is that there simply isn’t enough of it. There IS a great portion of gameplay in MGS4, but when compared to the cut-scenes, some more gameplay or shorter cut-scenes would have been good to balance out the game.
In the end, Metal Gear Solid 4 is THE must-get game for the Playstation 3. If you are a fan of the franchise and own a PS3, odds are you already beat the game (isn’t the ending awesome!?) and are reading this just to see if you hate me or not. If you’re interested in the franchise or just want to see what all the fuzz is about, PLAY this game.
Did GTAIV deserve a 10? No. Does MGS4 deserve a 10? No. Does it deserve something close to it? Yes it does. There really isn’t anything bad to say about it, but the fact that there are more cut-scenes than actual gameplay should prevent this from getting a perfect score, regardless of how good they are. The addition of Metal Gear Online: Starter Pack was a nice touch, but nothing that should help in making your decision to buy the game.
The PlayStation 3 may not have been the strongest generation for Sony, but there were still some diamonds in the rough that deserve a revisit as PS5 remasters.
Even if they could just remaster and put on PSVR2, some would still look great as VR titles and could do a whole lot to bolster the headset w these exclusives! I'd imagine the investment of reworking these titles into VR would be way less than building new games from the ground up, and they could be amazing experiences, and VR often makes flat games feel fresh again. The Resistance and Killzone games are particularly what I want to see!!
I played killzone 3 in 3d and it really changed the game per being immersive.
In vr, that would be even more awesome.
Funny you mention that... my son wanted to play some PS3 games in 3d on my PS tv and he was blown away by how good KZ3 was. It really was a great addition to the game. Im surprised there have not been more 3d games from that era being ported to the PSVR/VR2.
resistance 1-3, killzone 1-3, uncharted 1-3, uncharted golden abyss, folklore, socom 4 , motorstorm, twisted metal, MAG, heavenly sword
Killzone 2+3
Sly Thieves in Time
Crack in Time
God of War Ascension
Motorstorm
Modnation racer
Infamous 1+2
Killzone trilogy in VR would be amazing bonus points if they offer shadow fall.
There was a psvr1 Killzone project that supermassive was working on at one stage which wasn't up to scratch and Sony brand it back in house I was hoping we would see that on psvr2 eventually.
Personally I'd love to see some more love or acknowledgement of psvr2 from Sony in general it was a expensive headset and Sony barely acknowledge it's existence
The amount of work needed to remaster these games wouldn't be beneficial on a financial and business sense.. MGS4 would probably be the best bet as it would need the least amount of work!
The time is perfect for a resistance fall of man game campaign coop multiplayer
The resistance series is str8 trash to me. Socom 3 I would welcome. Or killzone MP.
Resistance was ok but Warhawk and Starhawk was better and kept me coming back for almost a decade of fun and petty revenge on the loud mouth unskilled players 🤣
Edit I loved capture the flag dropping the pot on the flag carrier was extremely satisfying as well as transforming your plane in bot form and stumping them to death 😱
An article looking at the symbolic meaning behind the cigarettes in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.
Game creator Hideo Kojima is and probably will always be best-known for his creation and stewardship of the Metal Gear series at Konami, which since his departure has been more-or-less on permanent hiatus (don't mention Survive). In his almost three decades these games evolved to the point where they predicted certain problems of the information age (MGS 2), took aim at contemporary topics like Guantanamo Bay (MGS: Ground Zeroes), and ended on a profound sense of sadness about our species' inability to break the cycles of global conflict (MGS V).
It's not clear what sparked this reflection, but Kojima's been thinking about Metal Gear Solid 4, an entry that was (and unfortunately still remains) a PlayStation 3 exclusive. In that entry the player controls an aged Solid Snake in the year 2014, caught up in a civil war being fought between Private Military Companies (PMCs).
To this day, it's one of those games where I refuse to skip the cutscenes, no matter how many playthroughs I've done.
But if you ask me...MGS2 was bloody prophetic and has aged like fine wine. That game was blasted as the weakest entry, and yet it's so enduring. I replayed it some time last year and it was remarkable.
Heed not the lamentations of people that say that MGS2 is bad because of the Snake/Raiden bait and switch. Every MGS game has its own merits, and while most people consider 3 to be the best, they all shine equally in my opinion.
@sad
I would generally agree but with the exception of MGSV. It had truly excellent gameplay/combat, but dull and largely empty open world(s), and a narrative that is literally only half finished.
I really wish Kojima hadn't tried to go open world with MGS. It just wasn't right for the series. But I get it. He didn't want to make MG anymore but he wasn't allowed to make anything else. So he had to experiment within that franchise. Still, it was the wrong direction.
I have been thinking about this a lot, MGS2 being the weakest and getting blasted.
My conclusion, for some years now, it's my favorite game of the series.
Going from MGS1 to MGS2 was such a big leap, in graphics, mechanics, etc.
And now it's even more relevant for being 'bloody prophetic' as you stated.
Maybe dust of my vita and play it again...
It's a shame we never got a remaster of MGS4. The original game only rendered at 1024x768, and it ran anywhere from like 20fps to 60fps depending on the area. A remaster could have very easily cleaned up the visuals and performance. It's such a great game. I just want to play it again but in its best possible state.
I agree, but they did all sorts of tricks to make use of the ps3’s cell processor….they’d probably have to rebuild the game in order to make it run on another machine. And, if that involves remaking those cutscenes somehow, then itll never happen, unfortunately.
Nah. There have been plenty of remasters of PS3 games and they've turned out fine. It can be done.
War... war never changes. Or does it? The war has changed ...did it? The answer is no! Unless it is yes! No, of course it is! Is war! Yes! No! Yes?
He was always ahead with this series. MSG1 taught me about the importance of passing on our genes into future generations but in a responsible way, for they are bound to what we experienced in our lifetime. Sons of liberty taught me about global control and simulation runs to test society in a grand scale, the importance and dangers of control of information. MGS3 taught me about patriotism and how that can blind you into doing things you never would have otherwise, all for the sake of politicians who only see you as another pawn in their grand scheme of things. MSG4 taught me war is inevitable and always orchestrated because it's great for the economy. Soon simulation systems will start dictating who goes to war and why, all run through proxies. Privatization of military company are already here. We already started to see how a small group of elites dictates everything that happens. Nothing is done, nothing happens without strings being pulled.
All that was literally the themes and core story of each game, so not surprising he learned that from MGS. Metal Gear Solid 2 in particular is so relevant today, it was more than a decade ahead of its time and a work of genius. Kojima saw what the digital future was going to become when it was in its infancy. Even MGS 5 despite being unfinished and less of a traditional Metal Gear Solid game with regards to story, had a fair bit to say about language and control over it that is relevant today.
It's a highly acclaimed series for a reason, and one of my favourite.
I've watched my brother play the MGS games, but I only beat MGS1 myself on the PSP in 2014, and MGSV in 2016. I took the themes and plots as lore, tbh.. trying to piece together the story of MGS rather than relating them to our current times.
It's definitely social commentary, Eidolon. You should read the "themes and analysis" section of the Wikipedia page for MGS2: Sons of Liberty for a start! Game was heavy on this.
I'll take a look, thanks. Actually might pick up MGS2 again (PS Vita), It's been years since I last played. Might start a new game tbh.
MGS2 literally predicted digital manipulation of information that we see today all the way back in 2001. MGS2 became Zucc's playbook.
Yes back in 1998 when I was 13. Throughout the years more information has been shown on this subject matters, but go back to early 2000s and information wasn't as prominent. Kojima was ahead of the game
If it wasn't for the retconning of how FOXDIE works, including clunky scenes with Naomi and Liquid, MGS4 would be a perfect game. There are so many gameplay options. It felt like us PS3 owners got something truly unique and special.
