Revisiting the Beauty and the Madness of Metal Gear Solid 4

It all starts off with an overly pretentious monologue, with the titular Solid Snake in the back of a truck, trundling along on a battlefield somewhere in the Middle East. Then all hell breaks loose, mini metal gears start to attack and they…moo. That’s right, like a cow. Snake manages to scramble to safety, cue a series of cut scenes and then you meet up with Otacon; or rather, MK-II, a small metal gear-esque machine which you can control and use to electrocute foes. All this ingenuity and wackiness, yet the game has barely even begun. This is pure Kojima, in fact, it is pure Metal Gear Solid, with everything dialled up to eleven.

In fact, the Kojima-ness of the game has only just begun. Twenty plus years of him working on the series, of being an auteur really show. A campaign this deep in game mechanics, innovations and story is rare, to be able to add to it at every stage is rarer still. A bit of star dust then. You see, each stage or location in the game pushes different gameplay elements. The opening Middle East setting is the ultimate in combination of stealth and action, the South American setting requires a bit more stealth with clever use of the environment and then pure stealth in a rainy, foggy European city, followed by a manic, uneven, poorly orchestrated motorbike chase.

I haven’t even begun to mention the final act and its incessant but thrilling cut scenes, the jumping between game styles, perspectives and split screen. In fact, the entire game is a smorgasbord of ideas, gameplay mechanics, characters, plot and environments. Heck, we even get to go back to Shadow Moses, beautiful rendered in the still stunning engine used for the PS3. Never before has a AAA title, with so much money resting on it, been so inventive, so weird, so playable and unplayable. It is an experiment, one made with big bucks and big ideas. Kojima hits every note, ties up loose ends, gives us back our favourite characters and creates the best indie game ever…only it wasn’t independent. Kojima just pulled the heist of the century against Konami.

So what exactly made this game so great? And why is it still held in such high regard? To be honest, as a long-time fan of the series, it is difficult to put my finger on a single point. So let’s break it down. First off, graphically it was a showcase of what the PS3 was capable of, a tech demo done good. As a tactical stealth game, it borrowed elements from previous games, updated the control scheme so that it could be playable for a modern audience and gave us the “does he see you wheel?!”…well that’s what I called it anyway. An innovation that adds an organic element to the stealth. No boring side bar, no light or dark meter ala the early Splinter Cells and no blackening of the screen ala the latter Splinter Cells. A system yet to be bettered.

Even with all this innovation and a truck load of ideas thrown together, many of them do not stick. The environments are too static and the South American section still feels too much like MGS3, a collection of leafy corridors. It’s a bit of a let-down considering the power Kojimo and co were playing with but the boss battle, as all the others, is tense and exciting. In fact, MGS4 may feature some of the best boss battles of the series. Just thinking about it now makes me want to revisit those grand, silly, sadly pathetic creatures. I think it’s in the boss battles and the characters they throw up that we see the beauty of what Kojima was trying to accomplish. This is a game about war and in war, the victims often go unnoticed, hidden, persecuted, driven to madness and mad acts of violent. In an age of war, this may be one of the best commentaries on its violence we have had.

So, the greatness of this game lies not in one or two mechanics and successes but the combination of good and bad, of the playable and unplayable, of the exciting and the excruciating (anyone want to crawl through an irradiated tunnel?). It is the game that is most Kojima; that is most genius and most Metal Gear. It’s why I have disliked MGS V so much. With everything that was at Konami and Kojima’s disposal, they turned out a game that would play better as a military shooter, one lacking in wacky genius, lacking in that signature MGS touch. Why? Who knows, allegations go back and forth. What I do know, is that MGS 4 is the thrilling, infuriating and beautiful end to the series that fans wanted and needed. It is, in fact, the last of its kind. A big, brash, experimental AAA title, the likes of which we may never see again.

Oh, wait, I forgot about the immensely playable and addictive Metal Gear Online…maybe next time.

Great post and well said!

I love the plot in this game and I find it gets too much flak at times. For example, the nanomachines became the butt end of every joke. Everyone is always raking on nanomachines being the answer to every plot thread. In my mind, since the Patriots ultimately were dissolving Humanity of all its personal identity using nanomachines, it made sense that the diverse range of supernatural elements would all be explained away by that same mechanism. If you think it's uninteresting that every plot thread ends with nanomachines that gives you a sense of how uninteresting the world will be is when it's clamped down entirely by the authority of the Patriots.

To me MGS4 was one time experience. When replaying it I just found it very limited and dull, as far as gameplay goes. -the individual levels are really tiny, and once you know where to go, they take you like five minutes to play thru.

The long movies are where this game shines. But once you've seen them, do you really want to see them again?

Also, the vampire boss was the lamest boss Kojima has ever come up with. Vampire... seriously? And he even looks and acts lame. Totally spoils the game, that one. The four supermodel bosses were also really silly. Why would someone give four girls supersoldier suits???

So, in effect, great movies, silly storylines, silly bosses, tiny levels. Overall score 6.5.

@Naylord: Exactly! PLus it's not too far off from where we are in reality...it's not nanomachines dulling our humanity but our phones, laptops and tablets.

Great game, seems to get a lot of trash talk on the internet for having too much story. Which is certainly true, but nothing that makes the game worse, just a decision to tie-up loose ends as a main focus. It's a game for long following fans and not new comers, that as much is true.

The gameplay itself is very good, yet will agree that I wish it had more of that 'game' to it. Most the upgrades and play styles go untouched, and seem pretty pointless due to the actual games length outside of cutscenes. However I do see why they went with what they made, MGS and MGS2 had a lot questions unanswered.

Still love the game and think it's fantastic. No Metal Gear Solid is as good as the first MGS; but I like 4 a whole lot.

to me ... well ... too long movie, I remember there is one especially that the game offert your to save after like an hour ...

The plot was meh, nanomachine is just too easy.

The split screen boss fight where the cyborg is in a battle while you destroy two-legged machine is epic to me.

I replayed the game by skipping all the vid and it lasted like close to 5h while with all the vid it was 20h game.

I played the shit out of this when I was at university. Thought it was amazing. I even got all the emblems. Then trophies came out and I didn't have the heart to do them all again. I got MGS V on PS+ for free last month but am yet to try it. Maybe I'll give MGS IV another look first.

@goodzorr: MGS V does not even feel like an MGS game after the opening 4 or so hours. PLus the story has no ending and the last half of the game is a repetition (literally) of the first half.

As a free download its fine lol

There is nothing pretentious about the opening monologue. It might actually be the only example of Kojima not being pretentious.