Review: Metal Gear Solid 4
Metal Gear Solid 4
5/5
While games have come to a new level in graphics and level of control, one thing that's been thrown out since the 90's have been the stories. A lot of the new games are based more on gun modding, big explosions and amazing backdrops/textures. Most of the best selling games of the day end up having shallow or repetitive storylines, take for example Call of Duty which is mostly a generic story but is an amazingly popular game.
Back in the 90's a lot of the games focused on bringing interesting stories, especially the Adventure Games (point and click) of that time. While gameplay and visual are important, the memorable games are the ones that also make you remember it for more than its sniper rifle.
MGS4 maybe "old" but it still beats about 99% of games coming out today, due to great mix of gameplay and most of all perhaps one of the best uses of cut-scenes in modern games. It's more of an interactive movie than a game, and that doesn't mean it doesn't offer some seriously enjoyable gameplay but it's beauty is it's amazingly written story, and how well its executed through cut-scenes and its narratives.
I've obviously not played the Metal Gear series in detail prior to this, I've only played bits of this and that. Yet the story is well explained even for someone fairly new to the series, while you might be wondering whose who in terms of characters it's not like you need to have played the older games to get into the story, that's the great part about it.
In terms of the gameplay, well the Metal Gear series runs on it's stealth system. You have the choice of tip-toeing, crawling and well avoiding as many enemies as you can or if you aren't good at that you can always engage them via the more risky run and gun. The games switch between 3rd person and 1st person is seamless, some games while have this tend to get it wrong by not having the level of zoom right or well just having a bumpy transition from one view to another.
The camo suit is definitely a fun part, and well executed. You can blend into just about anything, and it is a very important part of the game and is far from just a visual thing, again it links to the steal vs engage choice you have. Movement is pretty good, you have many ways of positioning yourself, such as the ever useful laying face up, a feature plenty of FPS/3rdPS forget about. The only problem is you don't have a jump, while you do have a sort of rolling jump you'll find certain parts where you think you can probably climb it but can't, and just having no jump (vertical) is a bit of mystery.
The PMC's (basic units) aren't too difficult, it really depends on the level of difficult you go with. You don't get a huge variety of different units, but being a stealth focused game it obviously doesn't make sense to chuck in hundreds of different units. The boss levels are pretty good, each of them different to each other and in the latter bosses you'll also have to do more than just try and shoot at them directly. The storylines behind each of the bosses are quite brutal, and well Metal Gear overall is definitely not for the lighthearted, while it doesn't have the whole overdoing of virtual blood and guts it has some very intense and "disturbing" moments.
I've also jumped into the online side of it, and while it's nothing overly special it's pretty good. You still find plenty of servers, included noob servers so you can still get in on it. Most of the players seem to be European based, so you might want to synchronise yourself with that timezone if you want to catch the most amount of hosts and players.
I could go and on and on about this game, it's been awhile since I could probably make a statement like that about a game but Metal Gear is definitely a masterpiece. Now it's definitely not for all, the more impatient of us will probably get tired of seeing its 30 minute cut scenes almost one after the other (overall you'll feel like you're watching through the whole LOTR trilogy), but for anyone that wants to go back to games being more than just flash it's definitely worth a look at, if you amazingly haven't checked it already that is. It's no surprise it's constantly referred to as one of the if not the best game on the PS3, but it's definitely more than that as genre aside it's just a classic piece of gaming/entertainment.
With another Metal Gear in the works, I'm just wondering whether they'll be able to be what they did with MGS4 cause it's definitely going to be something else to top it.