If you're a Metal Gear Solid fan, this review is not for you. Frankly, you don't need a review. Metal Gear Solid 4 is between you, Hideo Kojima and whatever bond the two of you have formed over the last 20 years of Metal Gear games. I might as well come to your house, root around in your shoebox of old love letters, and comment on their grammar, punctuation, imagery and literary merit.

"Did I tell you about the Shadow Moses incident? Do you have a couple of hours?"

Instead, this review is for everyone else. It's partly for those who, like me, dabbled in the previous games. It's mostly for those who might have had their interest piqued by the marketing or who fell for the "tactical espionage action" tagline on the box (only one of the three is true, and only occasionally). For you, I cannot stress enough that this is a terrible, terrible game.

There are two parts to a Metal Gear: the gameplay and the cut scenes. Over progressive titles, those parts have come unglued from each other, and it's obvious where developer Hideo Kojima's heart is. In Metal Gear Solid 4, gameplay and cut scenes have finally reversed their traditional roles of substance and filler. If you don't count having to replay the parts where you'll invariably get stuck, there's more here to watch than there is to play.

"And that's when me and Otocon discovered the true identity of Revolver Ocelot. Have I told you the story of Revolver Ocelot yet?"

This might not be so bad if you were watching something interesting, or even comprehensible. Instead, you're watching an indulgent series finale that exhaustively reiterates details and piles nonsensical twist on top of nonsensical twist. Without a degree in Metal Gear Solidology, you will be hopelessly lost, and by the time it's over, you will have long since ceased to care.

You will endure literally hours of glacially paced G.I. Emo. There are pointless one-, two- or even three-second pauses between lines. Characters grunt and pace and look at each other and sit and think and grunt again and pace some more. Someone even gets cancer before it's over. Metal Gear Solid 4 is an example of videogame narrative at its absolute worst: juvenile, absurd, tedious and self-important. Many games might survive two or even three of these, but all four are deadly.

"Hey, I wonder if those guys know about the nanomachines. Maybe if they have a few hours for their lunch break, I can tell them about the nanomachines."

Kojima references child soldiers, post-traumatic stress disorder, the neoconservative movement, gun control, electronic battlefields, military contractors and the economics of war. Recurring eggs and apples touch on Immaculate Conception and Original Sin. Various characters go through mommy and daddy issues. Without fail they all have bad haircuts. And in the end, Metal Gear Solid 4 fails to make any meaningful point beyond that the military-industrial complex is bad. In other words, old news. Eisenhower already mentioned this when he stepped out of office 50 years ago.

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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.

"Hello, smoldering ruined car. Did I tell you about the time I ate a snake? Do you have a couple of hours?"

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.

"Nobody there but them chickens. I wonder if they know the story of Naomi Hunter."

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.

Perhaps most disappointing is that Kojima seems to have lost some of his playfulness. Metal Gear Solid 4 opens with a disarming set of TV show gags (including one with an on-camera David Hayter joining the fun), but then it gets earnest and mostly stays there. At one point, you defeat a boss simply because you're not on an original PlayStation, and there is also a wonderful original PlayStation dream sequence. Perhaps more of this humor might have kept the story from being such a wet blanket. Like Lucas, sometimes Spielberg, and the Siblings Wachowski, Kojima seems shut inside an echo chamber where no one tells him "no" and devoted fans scream "yes" no matter what he does. I mean no malice when I say they get what they deserve. The rest of us are better off steering clear.

This review was based on a retail copy of the game purchased by Crispy Gamer.

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[For more of our thoughts on Metal Gear Solid 4, check out Scott Jones' I Call Bullshit: Special Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots Edition, and Billy Berghammer's Dissenting Opinion: Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.]