More than I could ever ask
Once the series was moved to Sony's Playstation, I had to play it at friend's houses (I was a Nintendo fanboy and did not buy Sony until the PS3, but more of that in a second). The series was fantastic! I loved the storytelling and the game play. I finished all the other games, played the original MSX games that came with MGS 3: Subsistence, and anxiously awaited for MGS4: Guns of the Patriots. The only reason I bought the PS3 was to play this game.
I know it was going to be good; Solid Snake's last mission. But the game was so much more. It's the conclusion of a saga. It's a movie. It's a game with two faces, as one can either play stealth, or go into a battle with a run and gun strategy. There's so much the game brings back from the other games that you owe it to yourself to play the others just to pick up the little homages to each episode of the series.
I realized the level of perfection this game has when I fought the first Beauty and the Beast, Laughing Octopus. In every other Metal Gear game, you have to learn a pattern from your foe and have a special weapon to beat him/her. In this fight, I found myself in an "anything goes" battle. There is no "right" way to beat your foe. And that gives it awesome replay value, and of course, great satisfaction once you discuss your strategy with others and find that there's no one solution. After the battle, my hands were shaking (it could have been because I had been playing for 7 hours straight the day I got it), and I thought to myself: "Hideo Kojima, you have done it! Good job!" I've never played a better game, and I've been playing games nonstop for 18 years.
The multi player is the icing in the cake. After finishing the great single player story, I've spent more than 40 hours in multi player mayhem. The great extra conditions like the Sneaking missions and Capture the Base keep me coming back for more.
I know this has been a lengthy review, and if you have read until this point, I hope you can appreciate how much I like and admire these games, and I thank you for reading it. This series has been part of my life for 20 years, and the ending did not disappoint. I believe no other game will entice me as much as this one did, and I hope my review at least gets you interested in this great story. May you find a game that brings you a gaming experience at least as good as the one I had with Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.