This is a Sneaking Mission

Disclaimer: While I'm not going to walk through the entire plot of the game, this is probably going to have spoilers.

Despite the fact that I have Aeris and Kilik in the title image for this blog, I haven't really discussed video games at all here. I figure Metal Gear Solid 4, which I got about two weeks ago along with a Playstation 3 (the first system I've owned from this generation) is as good an opportunity as any to change that fact. There's a lot to talk about with regard to MGS4, party because there's a lot packed into the same, and party because the game has gotten a near preposterous amount of hype (IGN broke out the rarely seen 10.0 for the game, although they 10'd Grand Theft Auto 4 as well, so maybe their standards are just lower now), a lot of which I believe is deserved, though perhaps not all of it. While the game in many ways should be considered the new benchmark for what a video game can be, I certainly don't see it as having achieved perfection, and really, I'm not even 100% convinced yet that this is the best game of the series from purely a gameplay perspective.

It's impossible to explain what the Metal Gear Solid series is all about to someone who has never played it mainly because, well, its sometimes near-impossible to explain everything that's going on, period. And while MGS4 eventually more or less ties up most of the loose ends, there's still more a few moments throughout the game that'll have you saying "yeahbuhwhaa?" I've always found the basic premise interesting, and now that the 4th game in the series deals heavily with PMCs (like the real-life and somewhat infamous Blackwater) it seems a little more poignant now. Anyway, the overarching story of Metal Gear Solid, which stretches from the mid '60s to the near future, concerns the Patriots, the Illuminati like organization that controls all of world affairs through a complex system of AIs. MGS4 finally reveals who the Patriots are and how they came to be, and for the most part explains how the previously disjointed installments of the series are actually all interconnected. There's still a lot of heavy-handed melodrama, and sometimes the not-all-that-clever symbolism (expect to see the Garden of Eden alluded to in some way about a hundred times) gets out of control, but on the whole from a story perspective MGS4 is a satisfying conclusion.

A big reason why the story can succeed, despite a script that's less than stellar at times, is how amazing well done the presentation of the story is. Every cutscene in the game uses the in-game engine and they all look absolutely gorgeous. At any point during a cutscene, pressing up on the D-Pad and moving the analog around will allow you to zoom in anywhere. You zoom in on any characters face as they're speaking, and it will barely affect your suspension of disbelief. The textures still look almost flawless, characters each have their own mannerisms which don't look jerky or fake at all, and there's none of the weird Uncanny Valley stuff that happens sometimes. A criticism of the MGS series has always been that there are too many cutscenes and too often (I would certainly agree for MGS2, not as much for MGS3), and while MGS4 certainly has a lot as well, they're presented in a way such that they're not a chore to sit through at all. My only complaint would be that the cutscenes are pretty heavily back-loaded towards the last 3 of the 5 acts of the game. In the first two acts, the game seems to miss an opportunity to delve more into the circumstances surrounding the local militias, which you encounter fighting the Patriot-controlled PMC grounds. While in the final three acts, even though the story is compelling, the gameplay seems to take too much of a complete back seat.

Elaborating on that point, the first two acts of the game feel very open and unconstrained. It seems like there's always one way to approach a particular situation, be it tranquilizing enemies on sight, or avoiding contact with them all together, or creating some sort of a distraction. The open environments reminded me a lot of the jungles of Metal Gear Solid 3, a game that I had a ridiculous amount of fun playing. The Middle Eastern village and South American base that comprise the settings for the first two acts of MGS4 give the same degree of freedom in terms of how you can plan your route to your destination, only they're even more interactive and detailed. The settings are no less detailed in acts 3, 4, and, 5, but they feel much more on rails and, as I mentioned, they are much more overwhelmed by cutscenes. Act 3 puts you in a European city which is gorgeous to look at, but that you aren't necessarily able to explore because you're tasked with following one particular target. After that sequence there's a whole lot of story, a boss fight, and a chase sequence and that's the entire act. Act 4 returns you to a familiar locale from a previous installment of the series, but, other than another boss fight, pits you only against purely robotic enemies that you're actually rewarded for killing. Act 5 finally, is just sort of a big grand finale that throws the kitchen sink at you but, again, is very on-rails and is extremely short. The way these last 3 acts are set up is the one thing that really bothers me about MGS4.

Even with these fairly minor complaints, MGS4 is a landmark achievement for the PS3 and for Kojima Productions. Thus far I've played through it all the way once on Naked Normal and I'm about 3/4 of the way through a play through on Solid Normal (yeah, the difficulty names are weird). I don't anticipate tiring of playing it any time in the near future.