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Metal Gear Solid 4 (PS3) Review
There are four things that Metal Gear Solid 4 has proved to me:
1.) Live-action can be used effectively to enhance a videogame.
2.) The Metal Gear Solid series’ oft nonsensical plot can also be used effectively to spin a good yarn.
3.) Videogame cutscenes have finally reached the standard set by movies and television.
4.) Mullets can look gooood.
Let’s start at the first of these shall we. Hideo Kojima is notorious for packing his games with all sorts of of-the-wall surprises and MGS4 is no exception. When you select “New Game” from the menu screen the first thing you’ll see is a live-action documentary about Octopi. Or maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll see a bizarre futuristic talk-show where David Hayter is being interviewed (wearing the Solid Eye) about his newest movie. After a moment you’ll realize flicking the left control-stick will result in flipping channels. That’s right, the opening moments of the game have you watching TV that takes place within the MGS universe. Many of these revolve around commercials for private military corporations and all are done with a Verhoevenesque surreal, satirical sense of humor that helps flesh out the world, yet doesn’t get in the way of the proceedings as it did a decade ago when you’d switch from human actors to their in-game avatars. It’s a bold move to start the game this way, but ultimately a brilliant one.
And then the game loads…
When we last left off with Solid Snake in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, the Metal Gear Solid plot didn’t make a whole lot of sense. In Metal Gear Solid, Solid Snake found out that his old boss, mentor, and series’ villain “Big Boss” was actually his father (or Snake was a clone of him, but whatever), and that the main villain of the game, the inconspicuously named “Liquid Snake” was actually Solid Snake’s evil twin brother that he didn’t even know he had. In MGS2: Sons of Liberty, the main villain was (gasp) Snake’s other twin brother that he didn’t know he had named “Solidus Snake.” Also, series villain “Revovler Ocelot” had become possessed by the arm of Liquid Snake, to become none other than “Liquid Ocelot” (clever chaps there). He’d run off with a Metal Gear, there was something about a group of 12 people who ruled the world and called themselves the Patriots, and nobody cared about Raiden. And then MGS3 was a prequel, clearing up the origin of series, but adding little new. Given what a mess the series’ overly convoluted plot was up to this point, I was shocked and amazed to find myself really enjoying the story this time around.
It’s not perfect and at its’ worst it can be convoluted, boring, preachy, or even hypocritical (such as a hilarious bit where a character condemns violent videogames while shots of earlier Metal Gear games scroll across the screen). But at it’s best, it can be moving, exciting, clever, and fascinating. In a brilliant move, Kojima has a character explain much of the series plot up ‘til now in a church. “It sounds like a religious war,” Snake replies, and he’s right. The series plot has become so convoluted and larger than life that it resembles a religion with different interpretations and the actions of a few setting the course for the world to come. The series has always been silly, but now its finally crossed over into the realm of fantasy where the plot is more akin to Greek mythology than the latest Tom Clancy geopolitical thriller. You’ll have to suspend your disbelief to epic proportions, but if you don’t get caught up in nitpicking the finite details of the plot, there’s a pretty gripping story here.
Much of this is due to it’s wonderful presentation. Previous Metal Gear games had much of the plot told to us through voice-over codec calls while characters would ramble on and on about what’s going on. Those are almost entirely absent this time around in favor of in-game cut scenes which are mostly executed beautifully. Which brings me to my third point; the game’s non-playable parts (which add up to roughly half the game on a first play through, assuming you don’t skip them) look and feel closer to what you’d see in the theatres than the stodgy character models we’re used to seeing in gaming. While they’re not quite up to the level of say, Wall-E, or Kung-Fu Panda, the cutscenes here (all done with in-game graphics) are good enough that they stand up on their own and while I probably wouldn’t spend $10 to see these in the theatres, they feel like something I’d add to my netflix queue straight away. I could actually imagine someone making an animated TV series with PS3 graphics and it being quite good. But it’s not just the graphics. It’s the amazing score by Harry Gregson-Williams, the wonderful voice-acting by just about the whole cast (sans Otocon, who is still painfully nerdy and Sunny, a precocious little girl who is seemingly in the game for no real reason other than to bring everyone from the series back for it‘s final go), and the absolutely stellar art direction that make this a worthy piece of cinema as well as a game.
Which brings me to the gameplay. After MGS3: Subsistence brought in the full 3D camera, there wasn’t anywhere really to go from there, so this is more of a refinement than an evolution, but what a refinement it is! This is the first time in a MGS game where Snake is quite simply a joy to control. The big new feature here is that you can now move while aiming (either in first-person or over-the-shoulder, each with their own pros and cons) making the gunplay that much more fun than it used to be. You can even do a side-roll while aiming, which is both useful and fun. The same goes for the new sideways roll move when on your belly. Another minor but important addition, is that when you go into aim mode, the crosshair will appear directly in the center of where you already had the camera pointed, so there’s no longer that jolt of going into first-person and have to reacquaint yourself with the character’s viewing angle. Whereas previous MGS games felt like borked action games once spotted by the enemy, MGS4 has action sequences that rival those in Call of Duty 4. Given that this is something you’re supposed to avoid, making it as fun and detailed as it is, is quite the achievement.
Furthermore, there’s the all new “Drebin” system allowing you to buy and customize weapons and ammo. It’s a nice addition, but truth be told, not entirely necessary as you can quite easily make it through the game without it and it perhaps makes the game a tad bit too easy. But again, you can ignore it if you wish, so no love lost there.
You’ve got a few new tools as well such as the “Solid Eye” which helps you tell the difference between friend and foe, but also doubles as binoculars, night-vision and thermal goggles, as well as adds a nifty radar to the top right of the screen. There’s also the MK II, a scouting droid that you can send out ahead to shock enemies and clear out areas. It may all sound too easy with these new toys, but they all run on batteries, and the MK II’s shock doesn’t take out guards for very long, so getting by without alerts is no cakewalk. The other new addition to Snake’s arsenal is his Octocamo suit, which changes color based on his surroundings like an octopus. It’s not as effective as MGS3’s variety of camos, but it’s much quicker by cutting out the menu swapping which helps with the flow of gameplay that much more.
One thing the MGS games have always been known for is their brilliant and inventive boss battles, and MGS4 is no exception. While they’re maybe not quite up to the high bar set by MGS3’s Cobra unit, they’re all varied, imaginative, and mostly challenging. My only problem is that I wanted more of them. There’s fewer here than in any other MGS game and all but one are saved for the second half of the game. And the final boss fight is sure to be divisive as it deviates greatly from the rest of the game with an all new control scheme. At first I didn’t like it, but it’s grown on me. But nitpicks aside, they’re all fun to fight and one of them, a sniper duel set in a blizzard, is a candidate for my favorite boss fight ever. I’d like to say more, but I’d hate to spoil it, so let’s move on…
There is one pretty major sticking point with MGS4 and that’s the ending. I don’t want to go into spoiler territory suffice to say the ending just plain sucks. It goes on for over an hour, and toggles between being boring, sappy, clumsy, or worse, taking away much of the impact of what’s come before. Normally I wouldn’t care if a videogame’s ending sucks as most have rather shoddy stories to begin with, but when you’ve spent about 8 hours just watching this story unfold (roughly half the length of a TV drama’s season) you’ve got a lot invested in the characters and story up to that point, and when it disappoints, it disappoints hard. Adding insult to injury is the fact that just before the final boss battle the game reaches a climax of truly epic proportions involving a split screen sequence where you control Snake on one half of the screen and watch a montage of all the main characters fighting an epic battle set to the game’s fantastic main theme. It’s a truly brilliant moment and the game should have ended there. In fact, there’s about 6 different places the game should have ended and each time it didn’t things kept getting worse and worse. It was almost enough for me to deduct a point from the score, but I didn’t because the gameplay was so good that you’ll likely replay the game multiple times, skipping all the cut scenes, and still having a wonderful time. The truth is, even if MGS4 didn’t even have a story, or if it just had a generic “stop the bad guy” story, it would still be one of the best game’s I’d ever played based solely on the gameplay.
You see, there’s really a lot of meat to the gameplay here. It may be little over 20 hours on an initial play through (and closer to 12 when going back skipping cut scenes), but there’s lots of replay value on display here. There are multiple routes to some goals, as well as an unlockable difficulty and a set of emblems you can unlock (1 includes beating the game with 0 kills, 0 alerts, 0 rations used, and doing it all in under 5 hours on the hardest difficulty setting. Good luck with that one). Personally, I like to set my own goals, like go for 0 kills, then do it again with kills, but not using health items, then trying both at once, but to each his own. There are several ways to play MGS4 and no way is wrong. It may be “just a linear action game,” but no other action game I’ve played has offered as much variety to go back and do things differently. If I were stuck on a desert island with only 5 or so games, I’d make a spot on that list for MGS4.
So yes, it may be maddeningly ambitious and wholly flawed at times, but it’s still an absolute blast to play from beginning to end. Even if the ending is a disappointment, it’s still a flawed masterpiece and a game worth going back to again and again.
Oh, and Snake’s mullet looks gorgeous.
10/10
Pros:
+Wonderful audio/visual presentation
+Solid controls (no pun intended, really)
+Intriguing story
+Creative boss fights
Cons:
-The ending sucks
-Some pacing issues with the longer cutscenes
-Could use an extra harder difficulty
There are four things that Metal Gear Solid 4 has proved to me:
1.) Live-action can be used effectively to enhance a videogame.
2.) The Metal Gear Solid series’ oft nonsensical plot can also be used effectively to spin a good yarn.
3.) Videogame cutscenes have finally reached the standard set by movies and television.
4.) Mullets can look gooood.
Let’s start at the first of these shall we. Hideo Kojima is notorious for packing his games with all sorts of of-the-wall surprises and MGS4 is no exception. When you select “New Game” from the menu screen the first thing you’ll see is a live-action documentary about Octopi. Or maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll see a bizarre futuristic talk-show where David Hayter is being interviewed (wearing the Solid Eye) about his newest movie. After a moment you’ll realize flicking the left control-stick will result in flipping channels. That’s right, the opening moments of the game have you watching TV that takes place within the MGS universe. Many of these revolve around commercials for private military corporations and all are done with a Verhoevenesque surreal, satirical sense of humor that helps flesh out the world, yet doesn’t get in the way of the proceedings as it did a decade ago when you’d switch from human actors to their in-game avatars. It’s a bold move to start the game this way, but ultimately a brilliant one.
And then the game loads…
When we last left off with Solid Snake in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, the Metal Gear Solid plot didn’t make a whole lot of sense. In Metal Gear Solid, Solid Snake found out that his old boss, mentor, and series’ villain “Big Boss” was actually his father (or Snake was a clone of him, but whatever), and that the main villain of the game, the inconspicuously named “Liquid Snake” was actually Solid Snake’s evil twin brother that he didn’t even know he had. In MGS2: Sons of Liberty, the main villain was (gasp) Snake’s other twin brother that he didn’t know he had named “Solidus Snake.” Also, series villain “Revovler Ocelot” had become possessed by the arm of Liquid Snake, to become none other than “Liquid Ocelot” (clever chaps there). He’d run off with a Metal Gear, there was something about a group of 12 people who ruled the world and called themselves the Patriots, and nobody cared about Raiden. And then MGS3 was a prequel, clearing up the origin of series, but adding little new. Given what a mess the series’ overly convoluted plot was up to this point, I was shocked and amazed to find myself really enjoying the story this time around.
It’s not perfect and at its’ worst it can be convoluted, boring, preachy, or even hypocritical (such as a hilarious bit where a character condemns violent videogames while shots of earlier Metal Gear games scroll across the screen). But at it’s best, it can be moving, exciting, clever, and fascinating. In a brilliant move, Kojima has a character explain much of the series plot up ‘til now in a church. “It sounds like a religious war,” Snake replies, and he’s right. The series plot has become so convoluted and larger than life that it resembles a religion with different interpretations and the actions of a few setting the course for the world to come. The series has always been silly, but now its finally crossed over into the realm of fantasy where the plot is more akin to Greek mythology than the latest Tom Clancy geopolitical thriller. You’ll have to suspend your disbelief to epic proportions, but if you don’t get caught up in nitpicking the finite details of the plot, there’s a pretty gripping story here.
Much of this is due to it’s wonderful presentation. Previous Metal Gear games had much of the plot told to us through voice-over codec calls while characters would ramble on and on about what’s going on. Those are almost entirely absent this time around in favor of in-game cut scenes which are mostly executed beautifully. Which brings me to my third point; the game’s non-playable parts (which add up to roughly half the game on a first play through, assuming you don’t skip them) look and feel closer to what you’d see in the theatres than the stodgy character models we’re used to seeing in gaming. While they’re not quite up to the level of say, Wall-E, or Kung-Fu Panda, the cutscenes here (all done with in-game graphics) are good enough that they stand up on their own and while I probably wouldn’t spend $10 to see these in the theatres, they feel like something I’d add to my netflix queue straight away. I could actually imagine someone making an animated TV series with PS3 graphics and it being quite good. But it’s not just the graphics. It’s the amazing score by Harry Gregson-Williams, the wonderful voice-acting by just about the whole cast (sans Otocon, who is still painfully nerdy and Sunny, a precocious little girl who is seemingly in the game for no real reason other than to bring everyone from the series back for it‘s final go), and the absolutely stellar art direction that make this a worthy piece of cinema as well as a game.
Which brings me to the gameplay. After MGS3: Subsistence brought in the full 3D camera, there wasn’t anywhere really to go from there, so this is more of a refinement than an evolution, but what a refinement it is! This is the first time in a MGS game where Snake is quite simply a joy to control. The big new feature here is that you can now move while aiming (either in first-person or over-the-shoulder, each with their own pros and cons) making the gunplay that much more fun than it used to be. You can even do a side-roll while aiming, which is both useful and fun. The same goes for the new sideways roll move when on your belly. Another minor but important addition, is that when you go into aim mode, the crosshair will appear directly in the center of where you already had the camera pointed, so there’s no longer that jolt of going into first-person and have to reacquaint yourself with the character’s viewing angle. Whereas previous MGS games felt like borked action games once spotted by the enemy, MGS4 has action sequences that rival those in Call of Duty 4. Given that this is something you’re supposed to avoid, making it as fun and detailed as it is, is quite the achievement.
Furthermore, there’s the all new “Drebin” system allowing you to buy and customize weapons and ammo. It’s a nice addition, but truth be told, not entirely necessary as you can quite easily make it through the game without it and it perhaps makes the game a tad bit too easy. But again, you can ignore it if you wish, so no love lost there.
You’ve got a few new tools as well such as the “Solid Eye” which helps you tell the difference between friend and foe, but also doubles as binoculars, night-vision and thermal goggles, as well as adds a nifty radar to the top right of the screen. There’s also the MK II, a scouting droid that you can send out ahead to shock enemies and clear out areas. It may all sound too easy with these new toys, but they all run on batteries, and the MK II’s shock doesn’t take out guards for very long, so getting by without alerts is no cakewalk. The other new addition to Snake’s arsenal is his Octocamo suit, which changes color based on his surroundings like an octopus. It’s not as effective as MGS3’s variety of camos, but it’s much quicker by cutting out the menu swapping which helps with the flow of gameplay that much more.
One thing the MGS games have always been known for is their brilliant and inventive boss battles, and MGS4 is no exception. While they’re maybe not quite up to the high bar set by MGS3’s Cobra unit, they’re all varied, imaginative, and mostly challenging. My only problem is that I wanted more of them. There’s fewer here than in any other MGS game and all but one are saved for the second half of the game. And the final boss fight is sure to be divisive as it deviates greatly from the rest of the game with an all new control scheme. At first I didn’t like it, but it’s grown on me. But nitpicks aside, they’re all fun to fight and one of them, a sniper duel set in a blizzard, is a candidate for my favorite boss fight ever. I’d like to say more, but I’d hate to spoil it, so let’s move on…
There is one pretty major sticking point with MGS4 and that’s the ending. I don’t want to go into spoiler territory suffice to say the ending just plain sucks. It goes on for over an hour, and toggles between being boring, sappy, clumsy, or worse, taking away much of the impact of what’s come before. Normally I wouldn’t care if a videogame’s ending sucks as most have rather shoddy stories to begin with, but when you’ve spent about 8 hours just watching this story unfold (roughly half the length of a TV drama’s season) you’ve got a lot invested in the characters and story up to that point, and when it disappoints, it disappoints hard. Adding insult to injury is the fact that just before the final boss battle the game reaches a climax of truly epic proportions involving a split screen sequence where you control Snake on one half of the screen and watch a montage of all the main characters fighting an epic battle set to the game’s fantastic main theme. It’s a truly brilliant moment and the game should have ended there. In fact, there’s about 6 different places the game should have ended and each time it didn’t things kept getting worse and worse. It was almost enough for me to deduct a point from the score, but I didn’t because the gameplay was so good that you’ll likely replay the game multiple times, skipping all the cut scenes, and still having a wonderful time. The truth is, even if MGS4 didn’t even have a story, or if it just had a generic “stop the bad guy” story, it would still be one of the best game’s I’d ever played based solely on the gameplay.
You see, there’s really a lot of meat to the gameplay here. It may be little over 20 hours on an initial play through (and closer to 12 when going back skipping cut scenes), but there’s lots of replay value on display here. There are multiple routes to some goals, as well as an unlockable difficulty and a set of emblems you can unlock (1 includes beating the game with 0 kills, 0 alerts, 0 rations used, and doing it all in under 5 hours on the hardest difficulty setting. Good luck with that one). Personally, I like to set my own goals, like go for 0 kills, then do it again with kills, but not using health items, then trying both at once, but to each his own. There are several ways to play MGS4 and no way is wrong. It may be “just a linear action game,” but no other action game I’ve played has offered as much variety to go back and do things differently. If I were stuck on a desert island with only 5 or so games, I’d make a spot on that list for MGS4.
So yes, it may be maddeningly ambitious and wholly flawed at times, but it’s still an absolute blast to play from beginning to end. Even if the ending is a disappointment, it’s still a flawed masterpiece and a game worth going back to again and again.
Oh, and Snake’s mullet looks gorgeous.
10/10
Pros:
+Wonderful audio/visual presentation
+Solid controls (no pun intended, really)
+Intriguing story
+Creative boss fights
Cons:
-The ending sucks
-Some pacing issues with the longer cutscenes
-Could use an extra harder difficulty