NOTE: Metal Gear Online has now been shutdown
The Good:
- Stunning visuals.
- Terrific story.
- O has been changed to X for menus.
- The gameplay when you get to it, it enjoyable.
- Multiplayer can be fun.
- Camera is now fully in third person.
- Excellent voice acting.
- Locations are well designed.
The Bad:
- More cutscenes than actual gameplay.
- The story mode is about 4 hours long when cutscenes are skipped.
- Repetitive dialogue in cutscenes.
- Bad value.
- Weapon switching system doesn't work to well in multiplayer.
- Extra online content costs real money.
- Setting up for online is tedious takes a long time.
If two issues have plagued previous Metal Gear Solid games, they are an overuse of cutscenes and a camera that can't decide if it wants to be an overhead view or third person, well one if these issues have been fixed and the other has been made worse than ever. The camera issues have been fixed and the camera is not fully in third person but the cutscene issues have been made worse, the cutscenes are much longer and the dialogue is extremely repetitive and the cutscenes could have easily been shorter. These cutscenes can be skipped but when you skip the cutscenes the single player game will probably only last around 4 hours. Of course Metal Gear Solid 4 is all about it's story, and here it succeeds tremendously with a conclusion to Solid Snakes story, in risk of spoilers I will not go into any more details.
When you get down to it, the actual gameplay is solid and enjoyable but it is barley existent, gameplay times can get as short as 10 minutes while cutscenes can get as long as 90 minutes, the length of a movie. The gameplay allows you to play the games as either a stealth game or a third person shooting and both ways work well, stealth options range from crawling to hiding under barrels and only moving when the guards are not looking, as for the shooting, the weapons fell powerful and are fun to shoot, weapon switching is complex and takes a while but luckily the game pauses when you do soWhile the gameplay may sound fantastic the problem is there simply is not enough of it. Loctaion design for the game is great but most of the time you will spend in these locations will be watching cutscnes. There is also a multiplayer mode called Metal Gear Online, but setting up for this feature can take up to a full day and may prevent some players from even bothering with the feature. First you have to patch the game and set up a Konami ID and game ID, some people may not even bother with this feature because of this. Extra content for Metal Gear Online costs real money which will also disappoint players. Online modes range from deathmatch, team deathmatch, rescue missions and sneaking missions, problems here are in the online gameplay where you have to use the weapon selection system from the single player game, obviously it won't pause for you here and will cause may cheap deaths.
The visuals in Metal Gear Solid 4 are fantastic, ahead of their time in 2008 and still looking excellent today, but great visuals don't make a great game.
Voice acting and sound effects are also fantastic but like the visuals, don't make a great game, just a great movie.
Metal Gear Solid 4 has superb visuals and a superb story but that can only take a game so far, games need actual gameplay and Metal Gear Solid 4 lacks in gameplay. Solid Snake fans will appreciate the story but great stories don't make a great game, just a great movie and Metal Gear Solid 4 is too busy being a movie, it forgets to be a game. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots gets a fair 6/10.
