Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (PS3)

Four boss battles and a wedding
6/16/2008 6:13 PM | 5 Comments | Page 2 of 3

Kojima's main problem isn't the clot of facile political nonsense. More damning is that his characters are so unconvincingly comic-book. At one point, an estranged child confesses that he thinks his father is cool because he "reminds [him] of a comic book superhero." You ain't kidding, kid. There is no sign of the human condition in this mess. Even Snake's aging is a sci-fi plot twist. There is one exhilarating payoff -- the Johnny/Akiba confession -- that would have been more exhilarating if it weren't lifted wholesale from "Mr. and Mrs. Smith." It's almost as if Kojima's gunplay-as-coitus riff is an accident. The way two characters slap clips into each other's guns is probably the closest a Metal Gear Solid game has gotten to an authentic human moment. It is then buried under nearly two hours of exposition that follows the final boss battle.

Okay, but what about the gameplay? There is, after all, an option to skip the cut scenes. What are you left with? Unfortunately, not much. Metal Gear Solid 4 opens with two promising acts, introducing a new "living battlefield" system. Rebels are battling government troops. As Snake, you can jump in guns blazing to help one side out, or just stay clear and sneak around amid the gunfire and explosions, but just as it seems to be getting underway, it's forgotten. The third act is a terrible, drawn-out tailing mission followed by a vehicle sequence on rails. The fourth act is an abandoned base with a few robots (this will thrill Metal Gear Solid fans the same way the ending of System Shock 2 thrilled System Shock fans), and the fifth act is a short straight-up combat slog. There are, of course, boss battles throughout, including at least one that pretty much requires Googling "MGS4 boss battle stuck."

Throughout it all, you can unlock and buy guns, and there are plenty of gadgets that will probably be necessary if you want to play through the harder difficulty levels (on normal, it's entirely possible to bypass many areas by just running to the exit). This time around, Metal Gear Solid 4 has a newfound fetishistic regard for guns that will please some shooter fans. It also ships with Metal Gear Online, a rote multiplayer shooter made more interesting by a skill system resembling the perks in Call of Duty 4. Unfortunately, it's locked behind a fussy registration process, presumably so that Konami can hit you up for micropayments in the near future.

But for the most part, the gameplay is the same tired and dated stealth gimmick. Despite the tease of the living battlefield, Kojima shows little interest in actually designing a game. The stealth and gunplay are at odds, and the war price system is barely used, which means the gun purchases are a formality. Necessary guns are rolled out with the plot, anyway. Mix in a few on-rail vehicle sequences, some old-school boss battles, and one terrible door chokepoint. As a game, this is a collection of poorly related fragments.