METAL GEAR SOLID 4
Reviewed on PS3. Developed by Kojima Productions. Published by Konami
So I’ve finished MGS4. It’s raised more questions than in answered such as “what the fuck happened in all of the cutscenes that I skipped?”
So Metal Gear Solid 4. Is it the game that saves the PS3? Well, judging by E3′s Sony conference I think Sony hoped so. Will it? Well it is a very expensive way to play one game. System seller, yes but how good is it?
In short its very good. But…
(MAYBE SOME MILD SPO…OMG SNAKE IS OLD)
The gameplay has changed to a more modern 3D Camera so the fixed cameras of old have been given the flick. That said, control is decent, not bad, but not as bad as it could be. I still found the control of Snake to be a little clunky. But at least in this game you actually control the real Snake for the entirety of the game, even if he has prematurely aged. You have a vast array of gadgets, though you don’t need very many of them at all, the Solid Eye is really the thing you’ll want equipped 95% of the time . This is the thing that looks like an eyepatch- it just shows you a HUD displaying the collectible pickups and also offers night vision (which is next to useless). There’s also an array of weapons which are locked, though a new character Drebin will buy from you or unlock if you want to pay him, and every weapon you collect you automatically earn points towards his store. You can buy from him from the pause menu at any point (which means you NEVER have to run out of ammo. It also means respawning items and ammo are gone).
You rarely need to sneak in this game. Some bits are a lot easier if you do, but you don’t fail if you’re seen. The word stealth is avoided and you’re told to ‘sneak’ a lot. But truth is, guns blazing works in many instances. In some levels, you’re in the middle of a battle, yet enemy troops will stop fighting against their foes and start hunting you down- which is silly. The boss battles are generally pretty good, not ridiculously convoluted, nor super hard, apart from the encounters in the final act. Of the five acts in the game, the 4th is the best by far with so much action, that you’d wish that there was more of the bang bang and less of the chit chat. Its also a game that writes the handbook on fan-service. Every one of Snake’s allies (and many of his foes) appear in on form or another.
The game, when you’re actually able to play it, is great. the thing that holds it back is the same thing that has held back all of the Metal Gear Solid games. Its probably the only reason why MGS3 sold half as many copies as MGS2 did. That is the story and the cutscenes. Kojima Productions have done two things to fix the perceived problems with the excess cutscenes and exposition. They’ve cut the codec conversations right down. Sure some go on for a bit but the interruptions aren’t so frequent. The other thing is Otacon can brief you while you play rather than going to the codec screen at the drop of a hat. But then there are more cutscenes of people just talking. Oh god there are cutscenes. There’s a lot of waiting around for shit to get real. Shit just takes awhile to get real. It does eventually get real, but there’s no immediacy to the realness of the fecal matter in question. Some of the action-heavy cutscenes are phenomenal. They are astounding. But the ones where its’ just talk are so dull. And the ones where Kojima feels he has to explain every single minute detail of the maguffin are just sooooo heavy-handed, you won’t believe Kojima is not spending all day on MySpace. Oh god. It just goes on. So, you install the game to begin with, that’s about 8 or 9 minutes. Then you have to install each act. which is another 3 minutes. Then there’s the briefing cutscene, which is about 20 minutes. On some levels you face the boss in the middle and when you get to end of the level, there are lots and lots of long cutscenes. When you finish the game and beat the final section of interaction, there are about 65 mins of cutscenes and then the credits before you finally get to your score ranking. Sure you can skip it, but I wanted to see how long this thing took to beat. 20 hours and even though I skipped large numbers of cutscenes, I estimate that approximately 40-50% of the game is a cutscene. Now they’re not bad per se. There’s just a lot of them, they’re pretentious, heavy-handed, incredibly sexist (Naomi, Mei ling), childish (Akiba?), pointless (Sunny), etc. The debrief at the end just takes the cake for over the top (but maybe I skipped a few that were worse). Kojima is obviously a frustrated Time columnist
So the graphics are pretty good. Models actually look a bit polygonal (the game doesn’t do curves very well unless they belong to a woman, in which case we see all of them modeled with jelly physics). Sound is very well done, apart from every cutscene where the foley consists of people groaning, exhaling and making awkward noises. Music is great, though if you don’t like the new score you can just collect things to play on your in-game iPod. Seriously. Kojima is a big Apple fan. That is to say he loves the technology of Apple, not necessarily a fan of New York. Despite the game telling you about you don’t need to swap discs anymore since you’re on the PS3 system on a BluRay disc and characters playing a PSP and controlling a robot with a Sixaxis, there are more ipod, Mac Pro and Macbook pros than any Coldplay video could ever dream to shill.
I liked it and according to the game, I am a Hyena. I just recommend using the ‘skip’ function a lot (though if you don’t, your 20 hour game will turn into a 30 hour game)
C1 Rating: 3/3
