Too much watching, and the game is sadly too damn short for an MGS title.
Speaking of soldiers MGS4 allows you to fight with several of these militant in 2 acts which would be "Act 1 and Act 2". There are a total of 6 Acts and each of them are very straight forward and short with lengthy dialog that'll make you hate replaying the game a second or third time after you realize just how short the game itself is if you skip the scenes. In MGS1, 2, and 3 it took a good while to finish the game even if you skipped all the scenes. That's because the games were never split up into "ACTS", MGS4 was a huge mistake going in that direction.
As far as the gameplay goes, its still the same except Snake has a stress system that rarely effects the gameplay even on the highest difficult (Thanks). I rather not play another complicated game with issues. You can collect up to 60 weapons as well as the ability to play ipod songs from other MGS games..Apparently they are missing a few songs that would of been great substitutes for the silence in MGS4.
I had hoped that there would be Volgins theme song in there from MGS3 during the fight scene. Or the original MGS1 song from the beginning before you encounter Liquid Snake before you infiltrate the hanger.
One of my biggest issues with MGS4 other than the long scenes and short gameplay would be the amount of time you spend running around hardly doing anything unless you get caught on purpose. Kojima and his team did do an excellent job on getting rid of that ridiculous over head camera that was seen in other MGS games. And replacing it with an action camera instead. Apparently when Snake aims the gun you can hardly see him holding it! This is the problem in his awful character design, when switching to first person the gameplay feels sluggish not at all balanced like a FPS such as Halo? The game is best suited for third person.
When you narrow it down to the games graphic engine MGS4 proves to be the only game with real next gen graphics but this isn't enough to make up for its poor gameplay length and annoying scenes.
There are also quite a few interesting characters missing like the weapon specialist "Natasha" from the first game.
Naomi hunter returns but shes totally different, she no longer has that attractive European accent anymore nor does Snake seem to be his original badass self anymore. He's just this old stale character with a lacking persona who doesn't seem to believe in himself and yet people call Raiden the Emo?" In fact Raiden does make a return in the game and he's got a whole new Cyborg look this time around. Vamp returns as well with the same voice actor doing his voice (excellent). Otacon is practically the same only he's allot more aware of things now than he was in MGS1 and MGS2. A new face appears whom I never seen before (Sunny). Sunny is the daughter of Olga, a strange little Russian girl who cant cook eggs and she sings in Japanese rather than her own native Russian tongue (lame). Not to mention she has no Russian accent either. Even though Ocelot shows up, he's suppose to be Liquid yet he still has Ocelot's voice (I prefer Liquids original voice). So its hard to take the guy seriously when he calls himself Liquid, yet he looks and has Ocelot's voice and appearance. At least finding out that Eva is Snake's mother was a nice surprised. I hated her in MGS3. Shes not the only odd surprise. Drebin who sells laundered weapons to you is a fresh start in developers finally using more than just Caucasians and Asian characters all the friggen time with the cool laid back personalities. Drebin is a new face indeed and not at all a bad character. Even his pet monkey has a personality, he too has a fetish for smokes.
MGS4 does a couple of brand new things for instance Solid Snake has an interesting new Octocamo that allows him to blend directly into the environment. Its a neat tool to have. Although for MGS4 to be the last game in the series, its missing real unlockable items and outfits. Instead you unlock different camo outfits and a couple of boring face paints. Would of been neat to have Snake's classic outfit from the first MGS1 including a better MGS1 head. Of course rather than unlocking neat outfits, you unlock a ton of new guns that rarely or never ever appear in any other game. Being able to customize them is a great feature but some guns can only equip a dot sight and a silencer. So there really isn't any deep customization skills involved other than the m14 rifle which is the only weapon you can really deck out.
If your asking me my thoughts on the plot? Well I simply don't too much care of it. I found it pointless, which is why I still like MGS1 better than the rest in the series. None of the previous games mentioned anything about Snake aging. All of a sudden everything changes in MGS4 for the worst rather than the best.
At least revisiting Shadow moses and being able to play as Rex against Metal Gear Ray was a nice way of getting close to the end. The only issue i have with this act is that it was very short, and instead of fighting militants you had to fight lots of sentry bots, a few Gekko's every now and then. You were basically visiting an old run down place with allot of different flash back moments. Going back to play MGS1 again just makes you wish there was a next gen remake of it. Twin Snakes just isn't it.
MGS4 tries to buy you off with allot of classic moments, but offers very little in the end. Weapons (especially pistols) sound rather weak, and the fact that your fighting these "NPC" soldiers just doesn't add any dept into it. Your basically shooting at these same soldiers, until you run into "FROG UNITS" a female unit of super soldiers wielding the P90 rifle. Would of liked it if they had some without helments on.
Boss battles on the other hand are somewhat interesting. The beauty and beast units is what they are called. They each resemble bosses from MGS1 with similar names and identities. They aren't all that fun to fight against except Raging Raven which I had the most fun fighting. Didn't really care much for all the others since I thought the whole game took place in Middle East (would of been better if it did or at least a more modern city).The fact that Hideo used Acts to shorten the game just really ticked me off. I definitely don't agree with the 10 high score rating. For a game to be considered its last? There is allot of work that needs to be done.