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MGS4 offers a wealth of variety in its five acts. In the first two acts you have the opportunity to befriend the Militia to tackle the PMCs. If you decide to side with the Militia, you'll find the stealth is balanced out with plenty of gunplay. The stealth aspect increases dramatically in the third act, where the game switches gears back to the franchise's roots with sneaking missions -- until you are dropped on the back of a motorcycle in a balls-out on-rails sequence that is unparalleled in any other action game. By the end of the game you've amassed enough weaponry to make run-and-gun affairs almost easy ... almost. This is still a sneaking mission. Sticking to the shadows will more often than not be more successful than going around blazing Rambo-style, and it will keep you from draining your much needed health items.
Meryl really needs to lay off the Aqua Net. It's not 1978 anymore.
Health items will drain quickly as you try and uncover weaknesses in the game's many challenging boss battles. The MGS franchise is known for some of the most epic boss battle moments in gaming, and with the introduction of the Beauty and the Beast bosses, Kojima Productions does an admirable job of getting you to off them one-by-one, and afterwards making you almost feel bad for doing so. These encounters range from straightforward brawls, to a sniper battle that will make Sniper Wolf and The End fans smile. Kojima-san always has tricks up his sleeve, especially in the boss department, and a few bosses will need some thought (or a good memory) to dispose of. But if you have to use a strategy guide or get a hint, you've obviously missed some sort of a clue or a point about a boss' weakness.
When the game was originally announced, Kojima-san explained a number of times that
MGS4 would mark the end of the Solid Snake Saga, and that this game would answer all of the questions the previous games created. Much of this work is done through cut scenes, Codec conversations with characters, or interactive cinematics. These elements can tend to run on the long side, and I'll agree, and are overflowing with information, but if you're a casual fan, and possibly skipped one of the titles in the saga, Kojima Productions does a good job at attempting to clue everyone into what's going on. To try to appeal to everyone, this forces the team to go above and beyond the limit of normal cut scene length, because with all of the loose ends the team is attempting to tie up, there is a lot of ground to cover. Even the new questions and twists that crop up in
MGS4, everything is more than finalized, and for a franchise that's spanned over 20 years on multiple platforms, closing the book on it all is an impressive feat alone. And at least this time around you can pause or skip cinematics.
Piloting the Mk.II through the Nomad can net you plenty of secret goods. Try touching characters' faces sometime.
Even if you don't care for the story, or the length of the cinemas, you can't argue about their quality. Kojima and crew have truly outdone themselves with the visuals in
MGS4. Outside of some wonky shadow detail in areas, in-game action or during the multitude of cinemas, there have been few developers that have been able to pull off something this extraordinary on the PlayStation 3 thus far. From the playfulness of Drebin and Little Grey, to the epic Raiden-Vamp battles, to watching Liquid's devious plans unfold around every corner,
MGS4 sets a bar for game cinematics moving forward. The interactive nature of a number of the cut scenes, including split-screen gameplay, and the ability to scour the Nomad for hidden items during mission briefings are also a nice touch. If you don't play the game with a surround setup you're missing out on one of the best soundscapes to grace any game. Getting to place footsteps of PMC soldiers, hearing a boss creeping up behind you via audio cues, and feeling where a bullet whips by you are achievements in sound design; the soundtrack from Harry Gregson-Williams is delicious icing.