With all the hype for this game, it's hard to know what to expect. Fortunately, it's easy enough to sum up what you're going to get. An evolution of the existing Metal Gear Solid gameplay and the rough equivalent of the Lord of the Rings trilogy in cutscene length. Before I go any further, I'll state that I played and beat the game on the harder version of "normal" difficulty and my playtime was around 19 hours. This review will have NO SPOILERS.

The gameplay. There's lots of things to love about it. The new and improved combat system is a big one. The ability to purchase and customize an enormous amount of weapons. The OctoCamo that under certain conditions allows you to have a hot girl face with a butch body. The variety of areas that you visit, far greater than any previous Metal Gear.

There's only a few minor flaws with the gameplay. Too many ride-on-rails sequences. Sure, one or two are fun, but I hear Metal Gear is about sneaking around? Awkward, but easy, hand to hand combat during a boss fight. Absolutely atrocious "stealth" sequence where you must follow a rebel resistance member for ages, one who is unable to stop himself from walking in front of a jeep flying down the road, causing his death, which forces you to start a fair bit of that annoying sequence again. If anything, the problem with the gameplay is that there's not enough of it, which leads into the next part of my review.

The cutscenes. Good god, the cutscenes. Over half of my playtime was in cutscenes. After watching the enormous amount of cutscenes near the ending, you watch the credits roll. Then there's a 30 minute cutscene, followed by more credits, and some more dialog after that. It seemed like it would never end. I've been reading on forums about people being so moved by the story that they were brought to tears by it. Not one isolated person, but dozens. Seriously people, come on. As dramatic and well-done as it was at times, I don't believe I'll ever find myself crying at a game where one of the characters in it has diarrhea and poops his pants, with the stain visible for the rest of the cutscene. I can only hope poopy-pants is one of the unlockable outfits.



The story. Utterly absurd. If you're a fan of Metal Gear, you'll love it, because it explains everything you ever wanted to know about the series, and no doubt, plenty you didn't. If you're new to the series, you likely won't have any idea whatsoever about it. You quite literally have to watch the Metal Gear Saga disc or one of the retrospective videos. On one hand, I have to give props to Kojima for tying up every loose end. On the other hand, it's not a "good" story due to how ridiculous and needlessly convoluted it is. The themes are heavy-handed, which no doubt means some Gamefaqs posted is already writing his thesis on such hot topics as : Snake is old, was has changed, individual liberty and the war economy. Not to say they're bad themes per se, but if you were to play a drinking game from every mention of OLD SNAKE or WAR ECONOMY, you'd die of alcohol poisoning within an hour.

I was concerned near the start because the game seemed to have trouble between being too serious and stupid, instead of silly. See : poop jokes. I wouldn't have been surprised if at that point Snake had a "bowel control" meter. However, the game soon regains that classic Metal Gear humour and it's better for it. Hearing the sob story of a girl who's life was utterly ruined while having the L1 button pop up so you can check out her butt is still enough to make me laugh. Speaking of which, hope you like butts, because there are a million in this game, all in skin-tight clothing. Snake's old butt is up in your grill constantly but you'll also find the females shoving it in front of the camera constantly.

The technical stuff. I have the 60gig PS3 so install times may changed depending on your hardware(I have no idea). My initial install was 7-8 minutes. There's an install during each new chapter of the game, roughly 2-4 minutes. That's right, multiple installs, not a terribly big deal though. The graphics and sound are incredible in pretty much every aspect.

To sum it up, it's an excellent game for fans of the series. Kojima knew what his fans wanted and he gave it to them in spades. Unfortunately, players new to the series will feel like they're missing quite a bit, to the point where I wouldn't recommend playing 4 until playing through the previous games. There's a very affordable Metal Gear Collection that collects 1-3 for $30. 1/3 were better as videogames, 4 is better as a "Metal Gear experience".

4.5/5. Though if I ignore the experience and rate it as a standalone game, I'd go down to 4/5.

If you want to talk about the game, here's a link to the Metal Gear Solid 4 thread (contains spoilers) on our forums.