Late to the Nanomachine Tomfoolery — Metal Gear Solid 4

If someone were to ask me what my succinct opinion was after playing Metal Gear Solid 4, I wouldn’t be able to give them a straight answer. It’s not that I can’t put together precisely what I thought of the game, but it’s impossible to answer that question as quick as someone would like.

That hesitation arises because MGS4 is a very uneven game. It has plenty of good parts; heck, some of it is actually pretty damned brilliant, with some of the best sequences I’ve ever seen in a game — interactive or not. The problem, then, is that it falls flat on its face just as often, with the game itself taking a backseat to the excess narrative and exposition. Basically, it doesn’t play to its inherent strengths as often as it should.

MGS4 features a much older Solid Snake in appearance despite taking place in 2014, a mere five years after Metal Gear Solid 2. Snake has been aging rapidly due to a seemingly unknown genetic defect, and he doesn’t have much longer to live. Despite that, he’s still undertaking a mission he received from Colonel Campbell: kill Liquid Ocelot. Liquid’s taken residence in the Middle East, and Snake will have to wade through the opposition and rebels to make it to him. Good thing you can make it easier by siding with the rebels.

And siding with them is pretty fun too. It not only makes progressing through areas easier, but gives a new dynamic to a Metal Gear game. The controls have been overhauled to make the game feel more like a shooter as well. You can tell that series creator and director Hideo Kojima, along with Kojima Productions, paid attention to specific criticisms from the previous games, and it shows with the controls. The main problem before was that it was impossible to jump out and firefight someone in the older games if you were spotted; this is now possible. It’s not as easy as it would be in your average third-person shooter (you have to hold L1 to shoot), but it’s fine for a game and franchise that encourages stealth.

The camouflage system is back from Metal Gear Solid 3, and its fine tuning is further proof of Kojima paying attention to criticism. The introduction of the camo system added a new sense of veracity then, but it became tiresome going into the menu to keep changing it by the end of the game. Now, it’s streamlined with Old Snake outfitted with an Octocamo suit that changes automatically to blend with the environment to keep your camo index up. It sure wouldn’t have had a place during the Cold War (when MGS3 takes place), but it does in the near future.

MGS4 also finally deals with the problem of enemies having ID locked weapons that you couldn’t take when you either K.O’d or killed them, something you couldn’t deal with in the first two MGS games. Now you can! For a price. There’s a guy named Drebin (one of many, but this one has a thing for you) who can remove the IDs for you by paying him Drebin Points (DP). He’ll also sell you weapons and ammo, though the former can be very expensive. You accrue DP by collecting weapons you already have, though you empty out the ammo first. It’s true that it makes the game a little too firefight friendly, but it’s a blessing when you’re fighting alone. I loved it when I was in need of some tranquilizer ammo.

The instruction booklet also spends pages describing how to survive in the battlefield. A shame that setting is dropped one-third of the way in. The biggest problem with MGS4 is the glaringly obvious cut scene to gameplay ratio. Anyone who’s played a Metal Gear Solid title before knows they can be unbelievably talky and preachy, but the cut scenes mostly weren’t too unnecessarily long. MGS3 has the best of the aforementioned ratios — among one of the reasons why that game is hailed as the best game in the series. This is one strength MGS4 does not play to in the least.

MGS4 has plenty of cut scenes that are unnecessarily long. In what was Kojima’s way of making the game more cinematic and movie-like, the character models have excessive gesticulations during many of its scenes, most of which only serve to lengthen them. It gave me flashbacks to Star Ocean: Till the End of Time, which had the same problem – though it’s honestly not as bad as that game’s. This is the answer to people who complained about too many Codec scenes before, and if you did I hope you’re feeling sorry for yourself. I kind of dinged the comic book-style cut scenes that popped up in some of the PSP titles in lieu of CG ones before, and that’s something I need to apologize for. After playing this game, I welcome them wholeheartedly.

The dialogue could also be a problem. No, not because it’s full of cheesy moments, which is a series staple at this point. The truth behind some of the plot holes induced by MGS2, especially in the crazy last two hours, are unveiled in this game. Quite a few of them are confounding, with explanations that are either mind-boggling or, worse, retcon events from the last three games. Those explanations make the actions of some characters in the older games completely bizarre.

But wait, there’s more! Another sticking problem is in how frequent cut scenes are, especially in the last three Acts. It’s heartbreaking to see only Acts 1 and 2 follow in the footsteps of what MGS3 (and MGS1 before that) established, because the rest of the game doesn’t have as much, well, game. You’ll be watching more than playing, witnessing the bulk of the game’s nine hours of cut scenes. Yes, NINE hours. To put that in perspective, that’s more than Xenosaga: Episode I, which had seven-and-a-half. Most of the scenes and story revelations near the end are enough to make anyone who bashed MGS2’s zany finale feel bad.

And man does Kojima know how to play to his fanbase. This game was supposed to be the series grand finale, the all-encompassing Metal Gear Solid title. As such, it’s pack to the brim with homages and fan service. Quite a bit of it is lovely, and many of them are very clever for a video game. And all of the boss battles are homages to the first MGS game, down to having similar names. Some of it can become a little overbearing and fall flat a few times.

You can’t deny how top-notch the presentation is, however. It may be a two-year-old game, and a game may have come to knock it off its throne as the best-looking PS3 exclusive since then, but it still looks fantastic. The voice acting is also as good as you’d expect from an MGS title. Everyone from the older games returns to reprise their role, and this is definitely David Hayter’s best performance of Snake in the series. The music is also good, but I was disappointed to see that Norihiko Hibino didn’t compose a single track. He only served as the soundtrack’s director. I like Harry Gregson-Williams’ material just fine, but I usually like Hibino’s contributions the most. On the whole, the OST isn’t quite as memorable as the last few games in the series. And you can tell there are many points where the Metal Gear theme would have played, but couldn’t thanks to copyright issues.

When you think about it, Kojima tends to pump out his best work when he doesn’t pay attention to his fan base. MGS4 is a game whose mere existence is living proof of how there is such a thing as too much fanservice, in a non-sexual way (though if you like the sexual kind, there’s plenty of that too). There’s an utterly brilliant game in here, but it’s drowned deeply into the recesses of a river rife with excess pandering. That’s precisely what’s so upsetting about the end result of this game, and it’s a crying shame that it’s from a person…well, people capable of putting out much better work.