Metal Gear Solid 4

The glorification of cigarettes returns.

In the movie "Thank You For Smoking" Nick Naylor says to Jeff Megall, when talking about product placement of cigarettes into a Hollywood blockbuster "Now what we need is a smoking role model. A real winner" and Jeff replies "Indiana Jones meets Jerry Maguire" to which Nick adds "Right, on two packs a day", in MGS4 Solid Snake is that role model.

Enough about cigarettes, it's just something that caught my eye from the beginning when Snake lights up during the installation of the game, which by the way is silly because it's done in segments across the game. Isn't the whole point of installing content on your system to make things go faster in the long run? Why not let you install everything in one go even if it takes 45 minutes? I don't care as long as all the future loading sequences between gameplay are thus left out. Obviously people still don't get it because I see a lot of whining on forums about install sizes on games.

First of all, this is a Kojima game in all areas again. There are more cut-scenes to look at than there are gameplay segments and they probably last longer when counted together too. There are the same "what the hell was he thinking?" and "holy crap that's cool!" moments here as in other MGS games. Among the former there are the classic "hey honey, let's talk about deep love in the middle of the battlefield". The same game mechanics are there but once again it feels even more weird because of the level design. Don't get me wrong, the level design is great, but let me explain.

The gameplay mechanics from the first MGS game on the PS One worked very well in tighter corridor-like areas with a fixed camera angle. You had the radar and knew in which direction enemies were looking and could "calculate" exactly where you could move as to not get caught. I think one of the most important things of any game is that you can play it just for fun and progress along the storyline while feeling like you're part of the world (the controls work like you'd expect them to, the mechanics are logical, etc.) but at the same time, if you're a more mathematically inclined "play-to-win" type of person, the gameplay mechanics allow you to use that to your advantage to really play the game instead of only experiencing it (hard to find a word for what I mean here). World of Warcraft is an excellent example, you can play it and enjoy the lore and shoot some shadowbolts at enemies or you can study just how much damage each of your spells does and really optimize your character to perform the best way possible while taking into account the game's restrictions (set of rules).

MGS4 feels awkward at times because the camera movement is free and the levels have a lot of diversity ranging from height differences (in some parts its odd how you can't climb up onto a surface while in other parts you can) to how open or restricted certain spaces are. I can't really put my finger on what exactly causes the gameplay to feel a bit off at times but I really believe it's the old MGS mechanics in a more complex setting than before. The free camera was already given in MGS3: Subsistence, and it felt odd there too. The jungle seemed a lot harder than it was. Maybe it creates a false sense of added difficulty. Sometimes you can just run through a level to the end while at other times you really need to watch out for enemies. Another thing that was weird for me was the NPCs (allies and enemies alike) getting an exclamation mark over their heads when they see you in battle. The game still moves by the old set of rules even in a big battle which is strange. Why not just let the player run around like traditionally without having to feel like you're not really a part of the game world unless you get that ! above someone's head. Distinguishing allies between enemies in the beginning was odd as well even though the coloring of their nameplates tries its best to help you out. HD resolutions can produce quite a tiny nameplate.

The game is beautiful to look at that's for sure and the sounds are amazing but once again the voice acting is absolutely terrible. I don't know why David Hayter is such a legend among fans of the series but I think part of it comes from them knowing that he's not good and it's a sort of joke. At least that's how I want to believe it because everything he says sounds so fake. I'm a big fan of the X-Men movie he wrote though so the guy's not completely talentless, just not a great VO actor. Snake isn't the worst though, what annoys me above anything else is the voice of Otacon/Hal Emmerich. He sounds like a whiny little bitch. He looks a lot like Hideo Kojima though in a way.

Otacon actually relates to the game's ONLY bug that I found and that was when at a certain point in the story he takes his glasses off and wears contacts supposedly for a while, he still does the "fixes glasses with right hand" animation when talking in cut-scenes. You could say he's just scratching his forehead but with the animation being exactly the same, I don't really buy it. Other than that the production values show. This game cost around 150 million dollars. The budget was clear in GTAIV but in MGS4 it's a different story to an extent. I feel like they spent too much time developing areas that aren't central to the experience. Take for example if you look through the entire graveyard scene when you turn the game on (behind the main menu), you'll be treated to different TV commercials or something. These aren't any quick "superimpose some hamburgers over a scenery" types of things either, they're extremely well made demos that could win first prize at any demoscene competition and it's clear a lot of time was put into them. This is just one example, but it seems like resources for useless animations and things like that upped the budget for this game a whole lot when in reality it could've been made with a lot less money. Some will argue that they're the icing on the cake and I'm not condoning them or anything but there's quite a lot of it and personally I wouldn't have spent so much time on filler material.

So, the attention to detail is great. Weapons are modelled very well and looking through the end credits you see there was a specific team working on them to make them as realistic as possible. It's an interesting game because it really does mix hyper realism with total fiction and sometimes absolutely silly concepts. The levels are also full of detail but one thing that annoys me about them is all the crap you can collect. I've sort of got this thing stuck in the back of my head that I need to collect everything there is in any level in games if there is an inventory to store them in and it's not overflowing (ie max ammo already). Then I proceed to save all the stuff for a "sticky situation". It's all good up to this point, but the thing is the sticky situation never comes. This is a problem in MGS4 because I want to collect everything on the level and with the save system being what it is, you're left running around a lot.

The save system isn't great. You can save your game whenever you want.. sort of. Because when you save your game it just checks where the previous checkpoint was and saves you there, with the items you had the first time you crossed that checkpoint. What this means is if you die, you'll have to go through the entire level again picking up all the stuff you missed. And since you get money for those weapons you pick up that you already had, you'll want to be sure to get them all. You can never have enough money! Checkpoints aren't really my choice of save system because the player never knows where the next one is unless you create a % counter or something that shows precisely when the next one is coming and that will never be accurate enough because of boss monsters, level design, and so on. Just give a free save system and set difficulty accordingly. It doesn't matter where your character starts on the level, as long as you get to keep what you gathered. MGS4 is a lot about the items so the save system should work hand in hand with that.

Then again, you can always buy whatever you want on the battlefield, even during a fight. Just pause the game and go shopping. This means you'll virtually never run out of ammo because you'll never run out of money because you constantly keep looking for items to pick up along your travels. Right? You do don't you? I haven't heard of anyone having problems with money in this game so it does seem that's not an issue. You can't just go and buy 200 rockets in the beginning (also due to weapons opening up later on in the story) but you'll have enough to get by.

The story is good and has some interesting points. It also raises discussion which is good. The characters are interesting enough. There's enough variation to gameplay and it has a motorcycle action scene that rivals Call of Duty 4 is Hollywood quality presentation, which is quite interesting because MGS is more of a sneaking game. In MGS4 you really need to go all out at times and blast everything that comes at you. Knowing what weapons or items you have at your disposal through the store helps a lot but isn't necessary to play through, it just makes it harder if you don't know what you have. The auto-aim is quite terrible though and doesn't lock on to anything until you're facing in exactly the right direction. One thing it does do great is allow you to set auto-aim on and off from one button unlike GTAIV which was annoying because you had to go through a menu if you didn't want to target random passers-by when trying to aim at a pidgeon. MGS4's auto-aim mechanic forces you to focus more on your own playing which I think is a deliberate design decision. It's still not a full on action game.

The cut-scenes reign once again. There are definitely a full-length movie's worth of cinematics, all made within the game engine itself, with hundreds of animations and lots of motion capture. It looks great but there's too much of it, although saying that about a MGS game is redundant since it's one the series' defining points anyway. In MGS4 you're given some nice options during some cut-scenes. You get to play a little during them in the form of Quick Time Events so you can't even put down your controller for its duration. The flashbacks to your past are a bit too fast and could be made slower to actually give you a view of what you're really seeing but then again I'm guessing it's trying to be artistic and portray that it is in fact a memory and that you shouldn't remember it fully. I would still increase their time. Anyway, you also get to control your little Mark II/III robot in the briefing cut-scenes which is a nice touch. Overall you don't really have to use it during the missions even though you could do some reconnaissance or electric zapping/bomb disarming. You actually have to disarm bombs only once in the story. One last thing I will say though, the greatest thing about the cut-scenes is you can pause them with the Start button. It brings up a pause menu with 2 options, either continue watching or skip it. Exactly what I would have always done in every single game in some way or another. The worst is when in games you press Start and it automatically skips the cut-scene and you can't even pause it if your phone/doorbell rings.

Which brings us nicely to another topic and that's flow. The story and gameplay flows well, well paced action vs. sneaking ratio, and you get to see different types of areas now unlike the world of MGS2 but the problem is it feels a bit disjointed. As with the disarming of bombs, the town sneaking mission feels very different to the rest of the game. You need to have variety for sure, but not too much and maybe MGS4 could've had a bit less or better yet found a way to merge them together a bit better. That's a huge topic so I won't get into details about it but visual aspects that span different areas bring things together nicely like advertisements, people or best of all a companion (and I don't mean invisible robots).

Product placement. Apple seems to be invested in MGS4 with the iPod and their laptop that Otacon uses. The iPod is a nice touch and downloading content off the Internet for FREE for it (as well as new suits, etc.) is a great idea. The Playboy magazines are funny as ever and for some reason Assassin's Creed is mentioned in the end credits along with Ubisoft. I'm not sure I caught that reference while playing through the game though. Obviously all the weapons have real names as well but I'm not too sure how the "digital rights to reproduce an image of a weapon" are handled by the real life morons who make semi-automatic guns for a living.

Controlling Snake is done well enough but why can't he sprint? I found at times that Snake simply ran around too slowly. He has a huge bunch of animations and some of them are never used like flipping over when in the prone position, or maybe I just never found them useful. Snake runs around like a girl holding his weapon. No disrespect to females meant here :) Snake has a certain finesse when handling guns. Also, when Snake gets shot multiple times his "Uah!" sound just repeats over and over again with the same sound file making it sound like "Uah!Uah!Uah!Uah!Uah!Uah!" which I think is some kind of trademark of the series again and doesn't exactly bother me but it does sound funny. Another nice design decision is when after cut-scenes you get back control of Snake your UI shows up before the camera has had time to fully sweep behind you. It's a really nice way of showing you that now you get to jump into the action, which most of us will be more than happy to do after another 40 minute cut-scene.

The boss encounters are excellent. There is enough gameplay otherwise too (although I would've preferred some more gameplay over maybe 1 hour of cut-scenes as it currently is) but the bosses are really the high points. The 4 beauties are quite interesting and resemble creatures from horror games. They are intimidating and you have a high respect for them. The first time you get to fight one of their beauty forms is a cool experience but then it gets repetitive a bit even though they're quite easily killed. There's another additional feature if you don't kill one of them for a long time and just keep running around. You get a totally crazy photo shoot mode. One of those classic Kojima WTF moments. Anyway, the bosses are different and learning their tactics is well done. They're not too hard and their tactics are clear enough. Raging Raven isn't as good though and sometimes it can get frustrating to figure out why the boss doesn't take damage. You can mostly figure out a way to kill them fast like Crying Wolf which seemed to be too hard at first was actually dead very fast when you combine some nerve-calming pills, night vision and a sniper rifle. The fights use fun mechanics that require out-of-the-box thinking such as going up against Vamp.

I haven't played the online mode yet and currently it doesn't interest me at all because nobody I know has the game. I guess it's an interesting addition knowing how much work they've put in on it.

MGS4 is a great game but at the same time one that relies way too heavily on cut-scenes. I literally fell asleep 5 times during the last one which comprised of a conversation between Snake and Big Boss. At least there's the freely downloadable MGS Database on the Playstation Network so you can catch up on what the hell is going on in the unnecessarily complex monster of a narrative. I don't have problems with complex stories (Mulholland Drive, The Fountain) but ones with too many dumb plot twists and silly events (proposing to someone during a battle isn't a silly idea in itself but the way it was executed in MGS4 was silly) don't interest me. Maybe something is lost in the translation and playing without the terrible VO acting would help but I can't be bothered to actually READ all that again.

Everything in it looks great, it just isn't really a game as much as it is an interactive movie.