Takes the artform to new heights. A stunning gaming evolution.
Where do one begin to review this game? I dont know where to begin and where to end. You could write a whole book only about the society references, the military opinions, the future prophecies and thoughts about modern warfare, the deep dives into the human psyche and how its affected by war and cruelities or all the smart popculture or modern day jokes that are perfecly implemented between the lines. You could analyze the references to christian religion and write alot about movie and game omages like Godzilla, Titanic, King Kong, Call of Duty 4 or Assassins Creed but somehow I have to take this review down to ground level and write something that can actually be fit into a review. I would really want to break down and analyze every member of the fantastic, deep and psychological Beauty and the Beast unit that brings a level of psychological pain to the game that you will really feel creeping down your spine before the game is over. I could go on forever about the end of the game and how all the threads are tied together and how the final cutscenes are the most emotional and stunningly beautiful cutscenes ever created. Kojima is really bringing it to a whole new level with this game. It has SO much to say about so many important things its impossible to call it "only a game". This is modern philosophy you didnt think anyone in the world, game creator or bookwriter, could possibly do this good.
But lets start with something easy. MGS 4 is the technically most impressive game I have seen in my long life of gaming. It even surpasses many CG movies I have seen in terms of quality. In many of the games cutscenes I find myself really dropping my jaw at how stunning it looks. I couldnt help but thinking about old , superserious CG projects like the first Final Fantasy CG movie and how Metal Gear Solid 4 surpasses them. The polygoncount and the resolution of textures are simply insane. This is assisted by Yoji Shinkawas impressive artstyle. He has surpassed anything before it in terms of graphical design with this game. Character/Armor/Enemy designs feel so unique, so realistic, yet so very artful. The Beauty and the Beast unit is the pinnacly of this design with their impressive, twisted warsuits. All and all MGS4 is a marvel to behold and it makes anything called "Next Gen" before it feel "Last Gen". The same goes for the sound wich is uncompressed and designed so that you feel immersed in the experience like no other game. Music is picked both from previous MGS titles and composed exlusively for the game and they blend together to create a musical score as unforgettable as the story.
The controls and camera in MGS4 has been vastly improved over the old games. The super convoluted camera and controls held the old games back alot and it has been adressed. They draw alot of influences from the best controlling games out there and when you have played a while you realize that the coversystem and controls probably is the best ones you have ever controlled. You can now also lie on your back and shoot once you are knocked down and peek around corners without holding 14 buttons.
Another issue from the old games that has been fixed is the fact that it no longer feels like you are cheating the game if you are running and gunning. Both stealth and shooter gameplay are equally fun and equally rewarding in their own ways. It never feels like you should be shooting when you are stealthy and it never feels like you really should be hiding if you chose to go John Rambo on the enemy. Another huge change to the MGS formula is the fact that you can now buy weapons, ammo and upgrades at any time during the game from a menu. You collect weapons from fallen soldiers on the battlefield that you then trade in for points in a weapon shop where you buy guns and ammo. So you can constantly adapt and change your arsenal of weapons to fit any given situation and you never have to run out of stuff you really need. This does not mean, however, that is feels unessesary to sneak since you have so much ammo. If you WANT to play it like that you can but you can also spend you money on stuff like silencers so that you never run out of those. The weapon modding system is incredibly deep and rewarding and makes it superfun to experiment with different mods to see the results out on the battlefield.
This system also combines with the dynamic battlefield that the game now takes place in. The world exist without your involvement. When you enter a battlefield you are not a part of the equation. There are no "enemies" waiting for you to appear. PMC and local militia (and sometimes a third faction) are waging war out there and you can remain completely anonymous if you so chose. If you are careful you can make it through a stage with both factions completely unaware that someone else was there and they will continue to take each other out. But if you so chose you can help the militia out and gain their trust. This way you can stick to their advancing groups of soldiers and go through the stage as one of them, taking cover behind their advancing wehicles and getting supplies from their hideout. As if this wasnt enough when it comes to how you want to play the game there are often a huge amount of ways to advance through a level. You can run down the street, go through the backalleys, crawl under buildings, go through them (on several floors), take the ladders and gain some advantages on the roofs and take huge detours to avoid alot of it altogether. This is a game you will play through many times to experience all the different ways you can play it.
And unlike older MGS games you are no longer stuck on mostly one location for the entire game. The contrast between locations from the opening scene to the end of the last chapter is really extreme. You will see alot of enviroments before the game is over and many of them offer diffferent challenges and different ways to approach the leveldesign and when you are done you feel you have seen and done alot. The same goes for what you are actually doing. There is more variation to the actual playing than in many other games. You are no longer only walking along by foot. There are other sequences and gaming elements put into this game that you woldnt think could fit into a game of this kind but they are there and they feel so right and offer so much to constantly keep you entertained. One of these sequences in particular blurs the line between cutscene and gameplay so much I actually had to check several times that I was actually controlling it. This scene animated so fluidly and so much stuff is going on everywhere that you feel like when you are actually doing something it is scripted, but it isnt. This game evolves storytelling in games and washes away the line between cutscenes and gameplay in a way that will go down in gaming history.
If you are still reading you will have noticed that it sounds like I am exaggerating but I am not. When you review games its easy to get caught up in the moment but right now I am not, and I am going to continue to sound exaggerated because lets talk about characters and story.
The depth of characters, their mocap actors and their voice actors are state of the art. Voices are sooo well acted and dialogues in the game has a depth to them that can really make an impact on you as a player. Not only that but cutscenes are extremely well directed. The way the story is told and the way cutscenes are directed surpass most blockbuster hollywood productions. Something that we thought would never happen. Something that games has always struggled to do. MGS4 manages to do it. There are cutscenes in this game that I thought I wouldnt see in a game for another 10 years and when all is said and done it wraps up to one of the best stories I have witnessed. A story I cannot talk anything about. Anything I say about the story past the first Act can be considered a huge spoiler. And I really dont want to describe the story with the first act because its really nothing more than a warmup for the real story. Lets just say that alot of characters will be involved and alot of things will happen that will completely blow your mind and make you feel joy, suspense, action, sorrow and compassion. Especially when it comes to Solid Snake and how his last mission unfolds. It turns out its much deeper and alot more complex than I thought. Kojima has gone to great lenghts to make you feel for Snake.
There are alof of scenes made purely to make you feel for him and how hard it is for him to interact with a world outside of the war. Its such a deep and emotional portrait. As far as answering all the questions that the series has brought up over the years they make a great job of answering them. But dont get me wrong, this isnt Disney, nor is it Metal Gear Light. The story is very thick, complicated and takes alot of thinking. And when its over you will be confused until you thínk alot about it and go and read up on it. I was very confused when the game was over and I was even more confused during many of the cutscenes that explains everything. Its not an easy ending or an easily digested story, but is an ending and a very worthy one. There is also alot, and I mean alot, of nostalgia and omages to previous titles. Most of them I cannot talk about without starting to spoil stuff so I will just leave it at that. If you have played the other 3 games before this you will be thrown into a very deep pool of nostalgia that will eventually make you very aware of what has happened with games since the first MGS was released and it will make you think hard about how much time has passed and how much older you have become since the late 90s.
This really brings me back to the beginning again and how I want to start diving into psychological profiles of individual characters and how some of the bossfights really made me feel very emotional. At one point I actually didnt want to finish the boss off. I paused the game and wandered around the house for a while to digest the bombardment of feelings that had just been thrown at me in a bossfight so intense it went beyond the barrier of being just a game. The game breaks the barrier between entertainment mediums and blurs the line on how much emotions and deep characters portraits a game can tell. As I said in the beginning there is really no way to review this game without writing a book. Because thats how much detail that has gone into every aspect of this game. Not one single thing in the game has been made without a prupose, a deeper thought and the intention of delivering something special. The ambition has been taken to new heights in every aspect of the presentation and the current generation of gaming just got knocked down a notch compared to this masterpiece of a game.
I know I have forgotten to write about a dozen things in this review and I also know that I have intentionally left out alot because it really boils down to that you need to play this game and experience it for yourself. Becasue no matter how much I try to describe this game there is really no way to really get it through just how intense of an experience this is. I have probably played games around 17 years of my life and not once have I played a game worth 10.0. I have given alot of games high scores but no game is perfect. The perfect game cannot be made. The game that completely and utterly leaves you speechless and that becomes better and better as you play it without any setbacks. Well, the rules have changed. MGS4 was the best game I had ever played after only completing 3 of the 5 acts. After that it got even better. I want to give this game 11.0/10.0. There is no way to get it all to fit into one single review, no way. So just play it. Now!
But lets start with something easy. MGS 4 is the technically most impressive game I have seen in my long life of gaming. It even surpasses many CG movies I have seen in terms of quality. In many of the games cutscenes I find myself really dropping my jaw at how stunning it looks. I couldnt help but thinking about old , superserious CG projects like the first Final Fantasy CG movie and how Metal Gear Solid 4 surpasses them. The polygoncount and the resolution of textures are simply insane. This is assisted by Yoji Shinkawas impressive artstyle. He has surpassed anything before it in terms of graphical design with this game. Character/Armor/Enemy designs feel so unique, so realistic, yet so very artful. The Beauty and the Beast unit is the pinnacly of this design with their impressive, twisted warsuits. All and all MGS4 is a marvel to behold and it makes anything called "Next Gen" before it feel "Last Gen". The same goes for the sound wich is uncompressed and designed so that you feel immersed in the experience like no other game. Music is picked both from previous MGS titles and composed exlusively for the game and they blend together to create a musical score as unforgettable as the story.
The controls and camera in MGS4 has been vastly improved over the old games. The super convoluted camera and controls held the old games back alot and it has been adressed. They draw alot of influences from the best controlling games out there and when you have played a while you realize that the coversystem and controls probably is the best ones you have ever controlled. You can now also lie on your back and shoot once you are knocked down and peek around corners without holding 14 buttons.
Another issue from the old games that has been fixed is the fact that it no longer feels like you are cheating the game if you are running and gunning. Both stealth and shooter gameplay are equally fun and equally rewarding in their own ways. It never feels like you should be shooting when you are stealthy and it never feels like you really should be hiding if you chose to go John Rambo on the enemy. Another huge change to the MGS formula is the fact that you can now buy weapons, ammo and upgrades at any time during the game from a menu. You collect weapons from fallen soldiers on the battlefield that you then trade in for points in a weapon shop where you buy guns and ammo. So you can constantly adapt and change your arsenal of weapons to fit any given situation and you never have to run out of stuff you really need. This does not mean, however, that is feels unessesary to sneak since you have so much ammo. If you WANT to play it like that you can but you can also spend you money on stuff like silencers so that you never run out of those. The weapon modding system is incredibly deep and rewarding and makes it superfun to experiment with different mods to see the results out on the battlefield.
This system also combines with the dynamic battlefield that the game now takes place in. The world exist without your involvement. When you enter a battlefield you are not a part of the equation. There are no "enemies" waiting for you to appear. PMC and local militia (and sometimes a third faction) are waging war out there and you can remain completely anonymous if you so chose. If you are careful you can make it through a stage with both factions completely unaware that someone else was there and they will continue to take each other out. But if you so chose you can help the militia out and gain their trust. This way you can stick to their advancing groups of soldiers and go through the stage as one of them, taking cover behind their advancing wehicles and getting supplies from their hideout. As if this wasnt enough when it comes to how you want to play the game there are often a huge amount of ways to advance through a level. You can run down the street, go through the backalleys, crawl under buildings, go through them (on several floors), take the ladders and gain some advantages on the roofs and take huge detours to avoid alot of it altogether. This is a game you will play through many times to experience all the different ways you can play it.
And unlike older MGS games you are no longer stuck on mostly one location for the entire game. The contrast between locations from the opening scene to the end of the last chapter is really extreme. You will see alot of enviroments before the game is over and many of them offer diffferent challenges and different ways to approach the leveldesign and when you are done you feel you have seen and done alot. The same goes for what you are actually doing. There is more variation to the actual playing than in many other games. You are no longer only walking along by foot. There are other sequences and gaming elements put into this game that you woldnt think could fit into a game of this kind but they are there and they feel so right and offer so much to constantly keep you entertained. One of these sequences in particular blurs the line between cutscene and gameplay so much I actually had to check several times that I was actually controlling it. This scene animated so fluidly and so much stuff is going on everywhere that you feel like when you are actually doing something it is scripted, but it isnt. This game evolves storytelling in games and washes away the line between cutscenes and gameplay in a way that will go down in gaming history.
If you are still reading you will have noticed that it sounds like I am exaggerating but I am not. When you review games its easy to get caught up in the moment but right now I am not, and I am going to continue to sound exaggerated because lets talk about characters and story.
The depth of characters, their mocap actors and their voice actors are state of the art. Voices are sooo well acted and dialogues in the game has a depth to them that can really make an impact on you as a player. Not only that but cutscenes are extremely well directed. The way the story is told and the way cutscenes are directed surpass most blockbuster hollywood productions. Something that we thought would never happen. Something that games has always struggled to do. MGS4 manages to do it. There are cutscenes in this game that I thought I wouldnt see in a game for another 10 years and when all is said and done it wraps up to one of the best stories I have witnessed. A story I cannot talk anything about. Anything I say about the story past the first Act can be considered a huge spoiler. And I really dont want to describe the story with the first act because its really nothing more than a warmup for the real story. Lets just say that alot of characters will be involved and alot of things will happen that will completely blow your mind and make you feel joy, suspense, action, sorrow and compassion. Especially when it comes to Solid Snake and how his last mission unfolds. It turns out its much deeper and alot more complex than I thought. Kojima has gone to great lenghts to make you feel for Snake.
There are alof of scenes made purely to make you feel for him and how hard it is for him to interact with a world outside of the war. Its such a deep and emotional portrait. As far as answering all the questions that the series has brought up over the years they make a great job of answering them. But dont get me wrong, this isnt Disney, nor is it Metal Gear Light. The story is very thick, complicated and takes alot of thinking. And when its over you will be confused until you thínk alot about it and go and read up on it. I was very confused when the game was over and I was even more confused during many of the cutscenes that explains everything. Its not an easy ending or an easily digested story, but is an ending and a very worthy one. There is also alot, and I mean alot, of nostalgia and omages to previous titles. Most of them I cannot talk about without starting to spoil stuff so I will just leave it at that. If you have played the other 3 games before this you will be thrown into a very deep pool of nostalgia that will eventually make you very aware of what has happened with games since the first MGS was released and it will make you think hard about how much time has passed and how much older you have become since the late 90s.
This really brings me back to the beginning again and how I want to start diving into psychological profiles of individual characters and how some of the bossfights really made me feel very emotional. At one point I actually didnt want to finish the boss off. I paused the game and wandered around the house for a while to digest the bombardment of feelings that had just been thrown at me in a bossfight so intense it went beyond the barrier of being just a game. The game breaks the barrier between entertainment mediums and blurs the line on how much emotions and deep characters portraits a game can tell. As I said in the beginning there is really no way to review this game without writing a book. Because thats how much detail that has gone into every aspect of this game. Not one single thing in the game has been made without a prupose, a deeper thought and the intention of delivering something special. The ambition has been taken to new heights in every aspect of the presentation and the current generation of gaming just got knocked down a notch compared to this masterpiece of a game.
I know I have forgotten to write about a dozen things in this review and I also know that I have intentionally left out alot because it really boils down to that you need to play this game and experience it for yourself. Becasue no matter how much I try to describe this game there is really no way to really get it through just how intense of an experience this is. I have probably played games around 17 years of my life and not once have I played a game worth 10.0. I have given alot of games high scores but no game is perfect. The perfect game cannot be made. The game that completely and utterly leaves you speechless and that becomes better and better as you play it without any setbacks. Well, the rules have changed. MGS4 was the best game I had ever played after only completing 3 of the 5 acts. After that it got even better. I want to give this game 11.0/10.0. There is no way to get it all to fit into one single review, no way. So just play it. Now!
