Review – Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

It’s ironic. As Snake becomes painfully obsolete, his body eroding and his ferocious exuberance deteriorating, the series throws a sharp contrast; uncompromisingly replacing everything old, clunky and constricting with everything new, accessible and fresh. The series has finally completed its maturity into a perfect duality of action and stealth.

Solid’s original trilogy were stealth games through and through; allowing Snake to be spotted and choosing combat over evasion was an excruciating torture. The camera counter-intuitive, the controls impracticable – all while auteur and near eccentric director, Hideo Kojima, struggles to avoid shattering the fourth wall with a resounding “You’re doing it wrong”.

But MGS4 is a different story; Sneaking Tortoise transitions to Assaulting Panther or Ferocious Crocodile and back at your discretion and necessitation. You can still play as a silent covert ninja, using your full-body “Octocamo” suit to blend with mortar or flora, but shooting is a feasible and exceptionally enjoyable alternative. This action side of the coin takes influence and inspiration from American shooters with a full 3D camera, first person scopes and iron sights, customisable firearms and fundamental cover.

The ironic part comes in when you realise that when he’s finally given a toolset he can use, to switch between Rambo and Ninja on a whim, he’s a too frail to use them. Stress leads to poor accuracy, too much action makes him barf and crouching for too long gives him back ache. There’s no torture scene in Metal Gear 4 because the entire game, watching a frail videogame hero break down in front of your eyes, is more than enough torment.

This hidden (and quite possibly imaginary) message about the balance of age, wisdom, technology and abilities, is contrasted in the story. Nanomachines are the magic plot-hole-filling buzzword; microscopic bugs that track, verify, activate and deactivate every soldier, gun and vehicle in the world. As war rages on and weaponry becomes exponentially more advanced, their control via nanomachines shows obvious limitations; a malevolent force, like Liquid Ocelot, can turn off every gun with the click of a finger, the world’s armies powerless to stop him. Nanomachines keep the evilest immortals ticking and the purest saviours decaying. Their technological leap is abated by their consequences.

Snake, and supporting characters Otacon, Sunny and Meryl, become international globetrotters, ducking from a Middle Eastern warzone to a South American rebel uprising in about 3 minutes (as you install to the hard drive between acts).
It comes across as a little too “Hollywood” at times; it lacks the coherent style and memorable brand that Snake Eater’s Jungle or Solid’s Shadow Moses exudes. The variation crafts MGS4 memories into a cluster of action highs and emotional highers, cavernous in disparity – the fluff in between, however, leaves it a little eclectic.

Split into five distinct acts, the first two couldn’t be further in style from the last three. Acts one and two, situated in battlefields, enforce the ethos behind MGS4’s development; either take sides in the war or silently creep past undetected. Kojima’s early aspiration to allow recruitment to either local militia or imposing PMCs is severely diluted (PMCs are always your enemies), but a level of choice remains between befriending and ignoring.
Battle zones are cordoned off by rubble and debris, but are open and expansive. Getting through either as a super spy or an AK-47 toting badass is going to be a challenge.

The last three acts however, represent a change in pace, gameplay, challenge and balance. It’s uneven and irregular. Human guards are replaced with robotic walkers, open ended gameplay is replaced with linear tunnelling and long stretches of gameplay are replaced with long winded cut scenes.
These theatrical displays are rendered with immaculate detail, beautiful voice work and perfect fight choreography – they likely deserve awards not yet invented. Sure, beats are overused and Japanese mo-cap actresses leave disjointed performances in Naomi and Sunny, but the very fact these are important speaks volumes to their quality.

However, their placement is a bittersweet transformation across each act. They are positioned as treats for a job well done in acts one and two, but gameplay between them diminishes more and more as the game closes. Act 4 features sections of absolute solitude (broken by Otacon’s constant jabbering, of course) – Act 5 hardly even features proper gameplay.

They’re fan service, through and through, but even as a Metal Gear deterrent I couldn’t help cheer as Snake and Raiden persevered, and seethe with anger as they are thwarted.
The ties to past Gears are tenacious; sometimes tugging on nostalgia, sometimes explaining away plot holes and inconstancies. Whenever a PowerPoint-esque explanation screen appears, complete with factoids and portraits, it’s time to either grab your notepad or your pillow. Kojima’s need to wrap up every story arc leaves a few sections of Metal Gear Solid 4, impregnable.

Metal Gear Solid 4 does the series, characters and production team proud. When it’s not too busy explaining the verbose storylines of its predecessors, it’s giving resolution to characters that have resonated with fans from 1998. When it’s not throwing out cinematic chases, fights and skirmishes, its making you lay prone in the grass, scope equipped and suppressor screwed on, camouflage at optimum and Solid-eye scanning nearby threats.

It’s still a little longwinded and nonsensical for some gamers, plus it’s irregular focus will make multiple playthroughs more arduous than before, but those who do play and enjoy it will find a beautiful gaming experience, a finale worthy of its predecessors and a definitive masterpiece of a videogame.